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Copied from the Congressional Globe. 



SPEECHES 



OF THE 



HON. HENRY MAY, 



OF MARYLAND, 



DELIVERED IN THE 



HOUSE 0E REPRESENTATIVES, 
At t9e Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress. 



Address upon the Death of Senator Pearce. 

Speech Against the War and Arming Negroes, and for Peace and 
Recognition. 

Speech Against Indemnifying Executive Tyranny, and continuing 
it by Suspending the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. 

An Appendix containing some Proceedings of Congress, especially 
interesting to the People of Maryland. 



BALTIMORE: 

PRINTED BY KELLY, HEDIAN & PIET, 

No. 1 T 4 Baltimore Street. 

18G3. 



E 4 r? 



EULOGY 



The death of the Hon. James Alfred Pearce, late Senator from Maryland, having been an 
nounced in the House of Representatives, on the 13th of January,' 1863, 

Mr. MAY, of Maryland, said : 

Mr. Speaker : I have only been apprised since I came into this Hall, that 
these sad ceremonies of respect to our distinguished colleague, were appointed 
for to-day. I wish, sir, to offer my tribute to his memory. He honored 
me with his friendship for many years, and in the last months of his life 
freely imparted to me his views upon the vital questions which now, unhap- 
pily, divide our country. I am authorized to speak for him here upon those 
questions ; and I wish, if the unpremeditated thoughts and feelings suggested 
by the occasion, or awakened by the touching and eloquent tributes of the 
distinguished gentlemen who have preceded me, may go in place of more studied 
eulogy, to offer them just as they spring from my heart. I desire to speak of 
the respect in which he was held by those who, in the divisions of political 
sentiment, as represented in party organization, having opposed him throughout 
the greater portion of his life, at length discovering that he was a public man 
who followed " principles, and not men," honored him with the highest testi- 
mony of their confidence, and committed to him the representation of the 
sovereignty of their State. For the Democratic party of the State of Maryland, 
I speak ; and also for those of all parties who believed with him that the Consti- 
tution of this land was made for war as well as for peace ; nay, sir, who believe 
that its strongest and most priceless sanctions were designed as bulwarks against 
the tendencies of arbitrary power supported by military authority, and therefore 
have a higher obligation in war than in peace. For those in our State who, 
while acknowledging all the delegated powers of the Federal Government, yet 
retain an equal reverence and respect for the reserved rights of the States, I also 
bear testimony of their respect for his distinguished public life — a lifo which 
illustrated, in a long public service, all those virtues which can adorn a high 
and pure-minded republican Kepresentative. For all these classes of our 
fellow-citizens, I wish to pay the tribute of their respect for his character and 
public services, and to express their profound sorrow for his death. 

Mr. Speaker, when the storms of passion had prostrated the assembled Eep- 
resentatives in both Halls of this Capitol, our Senator stood, amid the few, firm 
and erect. Broken in health, his vital powers almost exhausted, he yet marched 
up with the remnant of his life to the side of the bleeding Constitution of his 
country, and gave his latest efforts to sustain it. He did all that a public man 
could do here to support the paramount authority of the Constitution, and to 



oppose and defy the exertions of arbitrary power. I remember with infinite 
pleasure, and repeat it here with delight, that one of the last efforts of his public 
service was a noble speech vindicating his fellow-citizens of Maryland against 
the criminal and cruel oppressions under which they were then suffering. I 
remember how his heart, the seat of his fatal disease, pulsating with a noble 
enthusiasm and sympathy for them, and beating too warmly, denied him the 
utterance of speech, and compelled him to retire from the Senate and seek the 
quiet of his chamber ; and well do I remember another most gratifying instance 
of his spirit of liberty. It was my duty, as a Eepresentative of the State of 
Maryland, to take counsel of his experience in one of the rooms of the Capitol, 
touching an atrocious and unparalleled outrage on the judiciary of our State, by 
dragging from the bench 'an honored, eminent, and faithful magistrate, scattering 
his blood upon the ermine, and well nigh taking his life by the hands of armed 
ruffians ; and I can never forget the glow of indignation that kindled his eye 
and swelled his breast at the. recital of the facts. The excitement was too strong 
for his enfeebled frame, and he sunk under the exhaustion of his own noble 
enthusiasm. If he could do no more to vindicate the authority of the Constitu- 
tion of his country than he did accomplish, it was because he was denied the 
power to do it by the prostration of his vital functions, and the unheeding 
passions that prevailed. The worthless tenement of flesh could not support the 
struggles of its undying guest. Sir, he felt that it was his duty to prevent and 
redress, and not invite or provoke, the further aggressions of a reckless tyranny. 
He so stated his views to me. 

Mr. Speaker, let no advocate of unlicensed power, dare claim an approbation 
of his viows because this eminent Senator did not wrestle more conspicuously 
with arbitrary power in the halls of Congress ; nor let any complaining victim 
of tyranny question the integrity or the noble devotion of his services in their 
behalf; nor yet must any self-applauding martyr of liberty, attempt to gain a 
passing notoriety at the expense of the fame of this departed statesman of 
Maryland ; but let these, and all of us, draw from the contemplation of his life, 
on this solemn occasion, instruction that may be salutary. Let us learn from 
the moderation and fidelity of his character, to admire in our public stations, 
and seek those duties which look to conciliation, compromise, and concord. Let 
no wrongs suffered, no resentment fixed in our breasts, move us from the 
discharge of these sacred duties ; but let us try, through the common suffering 
that afflicts the land, to walk out from the dominion of passion, purified, 
regenerated and disenthralled. 

1 trust, Mr. Speaker, that, speaking from my heart, as I ought to speak on an 
occasion like this, I trespass not against the limits which ought to be observed in 
discussing the virtues of an eminent statesman. I must speak now, sir, as I 
feel. While commending to public praise and respect the memory and services of 
this distinguished man, I must be allowed to distinguish him as one who, having 
sworn to support the Constitution of his country, to the latest moment of his 
life, and through every trial, kept the faith of that obligation to his Maker and 
his fellow citizens. He rests, now, near the banks of the Chesapeake. The 
flowers which the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky described so beauti- 
fully as surrounding his grave, are symbols not only of his taste, but also of his 



immortality. And may we not trust, too, that the blossoms and fruits which 
opened and adorned his life here, will also be more gloriously unfolded and 
ripened in a higher and brighter sphere. 

Mr. Speaker, while we deplore the loss of such public characters in this 
time of our national afflictions, may we not inquire why, in the inscrutable 
decrees of Providence, those gifted, experienced, and good men, whose lives were 
consecrated to the public service and to the welfare of their fellow-men, are 
removed from us ? We cannot presume to penetrate the mysteries of divine 
wisdom. AVe must accept those providential lessons as teaching us that the cup 
of our adversity is not yet full ; that the chastening rod is not yet to be broken ; 
and also solemnly admonishing us that passion is perhaps yet longer to have its 
sway. But are we not authorized to call upon those ascended statesmen who, 
like him, have passed from earth ; all those great and good men who devoted 
their lives and talents to establish and maintain the principles embodied in our 
Constitution, which not only form the bond of our union, but which are higher 
and infinitely more priceless than it ; those principles of civil liberty which form 
the foundations on which the whole fabric of the happiness of man under every 
form of free government rests ? May we not expect, I repeat, that the spirits of 
the great statesmen who formed this noble structure of our government, and 
those who came after them and supported its pure and faithful administration — 
ay, sir, and the thousands of citizens whose souls have gone from ensanguined 
battle-fields — will be assembled witnesses at the bar of Heaven, pleading the 
cause of their bleeding country, and that the Almighty Ruler of all nations, 
responding in His good time, will send down His angel of peace among us? 
Such, sir, is my devout prayer. 



SPEECH 

OF THE 

HON. HENRY MAY, OF MARYLAND, 

AGAINST 

THE WAR AND ARMING NEGROES, 

AND FOR 

PEACE AND RECOGNITION. 

In the House of Representatives, February 2d, 18G3. 



The House having under consideration bill No. 675, to raise additional soldiers for the service 
of the Government — 

Mr. MAY said : 

Mr. Speaker,— The respect that I feel for the people of the State I in part 
represent; my knowledge of their feelings, their interests, and, I believe, their 
ultimate determination, require me to state some objections to this measure. 
With respect to the relations of this question as one of Federal power, I am 
dismissed from all obligation to consider it. As propounding a scheme of 
military strength, the bill is simply preposterous. As an evidence of national' 
policy, it is eminently disgraceful. Sir, it will fail, and the enlightened 
opinion of mankind will pronounce upon the attempt a condign judgment. To 
us who are familiar with the characteristics of the African race, these theories 
that sentimental gentlemen on the other side so frequently present, but serve to 
amuse. Their ideas of the perfectibility of the negro are another lesson to 
instruct us in that mortal presumption which raises questions with eternal 
power, and challenges the plans of the Creator. 

Sir, I never hear these platitudes sounded in this Hall and intended to elevate 
the negro to the same scale of being with the white man, without recognizing 
an attempt to overthrow those gradations which He has established in the distri- 
butions of intellect, and am reminded of the admonitions of that noble Essay 
on Man, which I beg leave now to repeat for the edification of these gentlemen : 

" Go, wiser thou, and in thy scale of sense 
Weigh thy opinion against Providence, 
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such ; 
Say, here He gives too little, there too much. 
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, 
And cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust ; 
If man alone engross not Heaven's high care, 
Alone made mortal here, immortal there, 
Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod, 
Rojudgc His justice, be the God of God." 



10 

them against becoming pledged to the support of a war " which would require 
them to disguise their civilization with the paint of the savage, and pursuing 
the war paths of this Administration, seize the tomahawk and scalping knife/' 
results from which they now so instinctively recoil. 

The present condition of our country can find no parallel in history. In 
vain can an example be searched for. A people the freest and happiest of the 
earth, we were blessed with the best Government that ever has existed. Provi- 
dence seemed to have preserved our continent undiscovered until the progress of 
the principles of free government were sufficiently matured by the wise and 
good of the earth, to make America the appointed place for their development 
and happy trial. The circumstances of our settlement, the various types of the 
early emigrants, the differences of religion, of habits, manners, customs, and 
institutions, all these conspired to help the hopeful problem. And when the 
purifying fires of our glorious Revolution lit up the high motives and exalted 
the natures that made the patriot and the hero of 1789, then all that Heaven 
could do, and more than it had ever before vouchsafed to man, was done, to 
erect the noblest structure of a free government that had blessed the earth. 
Those patriot heroes did the rest. Consummate wisdom and a noble disinterest- 
edness of purpose, guided by moderation, conciliation, and a spirit of compro- 
mise, enabled these great men to finish the grand work of our majestic Constitu- 
tion. Those who came next after them imitated their virtues and followed their 
example. The Government of the United States flourished, expanded, and 
became at length the admitted equal of the greatest of earthly Powers, the most 
admired of nations, 

" The land of the free and the home of the brave." 

Unexampled prosperity and power had been gained. The oppressed of the 
world hailed our asylum of liberty, and the divine right of monarchs began " to 
pale its ineffectual fires " before the radiant splendor of our new Piepublic. The 
present and the future, the citizen and the sojourner, the emigrant, the sighing 
children of liberty everywhere hailed our United States as the perfection of 
human government. 

But, sir, the necessities of labor and the cupidity of commerce sowed the fatal 
seeds of our discord. The ill-fated children of Africa, though led out from the 
captivity of barbarism, darkened as by a shadow the bright focus of our culti- 
vation and finally have eclipsed it; and strangely and mysteriously the barba- 
rism of Africa seems now about to subdue the civilization of America. 

African slavery was established in all the colonies, and those who are now 
engaged in destroying it, have inherited and enjoyed the wealth it helped to 
create. Climate and soil unsuited to the negro slave banished him from New 
England and the North to the warmer regions of the South, and " a compen- 
sated emancipation " from a fruitless dominion, fully satisfied all the demands of 
conscience or humanity. There was then no sin in bringing these human chat- 
tels from their native shores — in originating their sad enslavement, or in parting 
from it for money. "The precious price told down" then purged the moral 
sight, and slavery stood only revealed in hideous wickedness when interest 
stepped aside and was released. Sir, foreseeing this result and fearing it, the 
founders of our system provided every security against it. Before the Union 



11 

could be established, the strongest and most binding covenants that man can 
make in forms of government were provided, and faith, sacred faith in these 
guards of slavery, were mutually given and accepted. No stronger obligation 
can man give to man than our Constitution provides for this. It is in vain, sir, 
to consider any other or further guarantees. If these be not' strong enough, if 
faith such as this is to be broken, then there is nothing of human institution 
that can endure, and we find the inevitable end of free consented Government. 
The sin of slavery, if it be such, may be carried by a " higher law " to 
Heaven ; but here upon this earth of ours, faith, the bond, the law, the Consti- 
tution — these are its justifications. Our present national afflictions are the 
direct results of an intermeddling spirit at the North. Over and over again 
have the slaveholding States argued, remonstrated, appealed in every way, by 
every effort, to restrain the aggressive spirit of the North from these invasions 
on its rights of domestic slavery ; and though often j>assion has defied and 
denounced its progress, reason has not failed to use its persuasive power. Com- 
promise after compromise has been made, in the hope of averting or postponing 
the evil day of apprehended separation. Sir, the convulsions of these attempts 
were the disregarded warnings of our present calamity. For years, for many 
years, have patient, thoughtful statesmen and patriots from North and South, in 
most impressive lessons, warned our countrymen, and predicted our present 
situation as the inevitable result of these aggressions. But, alas, in vain. Insti- 
gated by the earnestness and success of a small but mischievous party of fanatics, 
the lust of political power at the North, at length seized upon the subject of sla- 
very, and employed its humanitarian aspects for the mere sake of office, or the 
rewards of party success ; regardless of all the most sacred obligations of Gov- 
ernment — thus establishing a general and defiant spirit of lawlessness which, 
habitually aggressing upon the plainest rights of equality, left no hope of future 
peace and security to the South. And while slavery was to be abolished at all 
events, yet no one among its wisest enemie's at the North was able to discover a 
practicable plan for the future disposal of the emancipated slave ; nor, sir, to 
this hour has any such plan been provided. And while the non-slaveholding 
States are equally responsible for the existence of slavery among us, and are 
confessedly unable to relieve its evils — if such there are — and the slaveholding 
States are equally powerless to remove them, we yet find that such plans of 
alleviation and ultimate relief as the policy of their laws or schemes of coloniza- 
tion have attempted, have been thwarted by the mischievous designs of the 
people of the North. The more improved and cultivated black man being 
refused a residence among them by the policy of the laws of some of the free 
States, resulting from the evils attending such residence, yet nevertheless these 
disinterested citizens of such States would inflict the greater evils of a perma- 
nent abode of the half-civilized negro among the people of the South. Deliver- 
ing themselves by a gradual process from the evils attending the abolition of 
slavery, they propose, suddenly and without preparation, to set free the slaves 
of the South, and bring inevitable ruin upon the interests dependent upon their 
labor ; nay, more than this, would instigate the forceful brutal passions of the 
slave, on principles " of self-defense," as the proclamation insidiously presents 
it, to take the torch, or poison, or the knife against sleeping wife and children. 



12 

Mr. Speaker, it was the settled conviction in the minds of the people of the 
South that such were the plans of the people of the North, and that the Federal 
power was to be the instrument of such savage aggressions, that caused the 
secession of their States. They felt, and all who understand the subject know 
how just and natural was the feeling, that such a state of constant and increas- 
ing apprehension had rendered the influence of the General Government insup- 
portable. They felt that not only Government, but even life itself was not 
worth having, upon the terms of such habitual strife, anxiety, and alarm — the 
Government of the United States had failed, or was about to fail, in those great 
objects of " establishing justice," " insuring domestic tranquility," and " pro- 
moting the general welfare," and which concerned so vitally their rights and 
happiness ; and they resolved to separate from a Government they could no 
longer either trust or endure. Sir, they did complain of the injustice that 
sectional interests of manufactures or of commerce had inflicted ; but the influ- 
ence of this complaint, while it added to the prevailing discontent by ascribing 
a selfish and domineering spirit to the North, offensive to ideas of equality, and 
raising up views of incompatible and conflicting interests ; yet these causes alone 
could never have separated our Union. 

If the existence of these destructive influences has been heretofore denied, is 
there not now too much reason to feel convinced that, however concealed, they 
have existed ? Do not the feelings and motives that are signified in these 
measures now presented, and in the kindred transactions of Congress and the 
Executive, give every true lover of republican government the right to say, that 
what was a rebellion against law now stands justified before God, and the nations- 
of the earth, as a revolution against the most direful oppressions that have ever 
threatened mankind ? Happily, however, sir, those whom the calamities of war 
have most afflicted, are to be spared the terrible vengeance now denounced 
against them ; and the menaces of the proclamation and of these measures are 
turned into an invincible sword of defense. But loyal Maryland, Kentucky, 
Missouri, and Delaware, these so proclaimed and praised for their devotion, are 
to be the victims ; faithful and defenseless, the sword of the presidential wrath 
pierces, their vitals through the sides of the bleeding Constitution which they 
have so faithfully supported. 

I repeat, it was the settled conviction of the southern slaveholding States that 
an " irrepressible conflict " did actually exist between them and the people and 
States of the North, and which was promoted by the latter ; that " all must be 
free or all slave ;" " that a house divided against itself cannot stand." Sir, it 
was the conviction forced upon the people of the South, that these emphatic 
enunciations of opinion were but the "slogans" of an inevitable oppression that 
was fast approaching, was then in effect inaugurated with authority and power, 
which could not be averted, and would, unless at once resisted, attack and 
destroy their sacred rights of personal liberty, of personal security, and private 
property, the fundamental rights of man, and for which, if he will not give bat- 
tle, he deserves to lose. 

They believed that the North was abolitionized, and had consequently abjured 
the obligations of any covenant with slavery, however solemnly made. This it 
was that made them renounce their allegiance and withdraw from the Union. 



13 

Before the Supreme Judge of the world they opened their hearts and resolved 
to offer up to Him the responsibilities of their cause upon the held of battle. 
Sir, have not enough bleeding souls testified to these convictions in Heaven 
already ? Have we not, their countrymen, their fellow-men, received enough 
assurance of their sincerity, their devotion, their power? Must this desolating 
war yet go on ? 

This solemn and momentous inquiry now tortures the thoughts and anxieties 
of the just and the good. I am pursuaded that the voice of all civilized and 
•disinterested men is now on the side of peace — peace on any terms consistent 
with our liberties and honor. 

Let me, sir, briefly explore, with hopeful view, this pleasing inquiry — 

•' The cause of truth, and human weal, 
O God above,' 
Transfer it from the sword's appeal 
To peace and love." 

Before I venture upon this, I wish to declare in all candor, as I ought to do, 
my settled conviction, that the people of the confederated States will never 
again consent to restore our political Union. I believe that their universal 
determination upon this point, is final. They will not again put their trust in 
the guarantees of a written Constitution with the people of the North. They 
have tried it fairly, and it has failed. Sir, they believe, and I believe, that there 
is established a fixed and unalterable antagonism between the sections where 
slavery is and is not allowed, and that no future political Union, so long as ' 
slavery exists, can ever be maintained between them upon any basis whatever. 

It is folly now to expect it. The part of wisdom and of duty requires us to 
accept this irreversible conclusion ; and however it may disappoint our hopes or 
interests, or mortify our pride, we ought at once, in the precept of our own great 
Declaration of Independence, " to acquiesce in the necessity that denounces our 
separation ;'' to cast the plans of our future, by the light it yet affords, or mid- 
night darkness and utter ruin may ere long claim our republican destinies. 

Mr. Speaker, that eminent and far-seeing statesman, the late Judge Douglas, 
avowed to me in April preceding his death, his solemn conviction that our 
political Union was at an end. I violate no confidence in repeating his opinions, 
since he assured me it was his purpose to publish his views at an early day ; 
and if the sequel of his life may seem in conflict with these views, there are 
those among his personal friends, here on this floor, who can reconcile his con- 
duct, and show the conformity of his plans with a peaceful, though it might be 
a revolutionary solution, of our national troubles. Judge Douglas, on that 
occasion, read to me an elaborate essay, which he told me had cost him more 
thought and labor than any work of his life ; that he feared it was too long, 
and he wished both to abridge and simplify it, so that it might be read and 
understood by all ; that he would revise it at Chicago and then give it to his 
countrymen. Death, alas ! frustrated this most patriotic design. That essay 
ascribed our present situation to the aggressive spirit of northern abolitionism. 
It declared his conviction that the Union of our States as originally formed and 
maintained, was finally destroyed, and no political Union could exist again 
between the free and slavcholding States : that such an idea must be adandoned, 



14 

and a commercial Union, founded upon the plan generally, of the zollverein of 
the States of Germany, be accepted, as the only practicable arrangement to 
secure peace now and hereafter. That masterly paper, every word of which I 
heard read by himself, and which since his death, I have endeavored in vain to 
procure, for the benefit of its wise counsels to our countrymen, fully explained 
the plan, operation, and results of the zollverein, and showed how, with certain 
modifications, it could be adapted to sustain all those principal causes and influ- 
ences which have hitherto made the United States the happiest and most pros- 
perous of nations. 

And now, sir, let me inquire what has been gained by the prosecution of the 
war? With an enormous disparity of forces and resources in favor of the 
Federal Government, are we nearer the end of the conflict than when we began. 
Does the present prospect of military affairs give encouragement of a speedy or 
even successful termination of the strife ? It must be confessed by all candid 
minds that these inquiries cannot be answered in a way favorable to the cause 
of the Union. Besides the results of a few ineffectual victories, the invasion of 
the enemy's country, and the capture of New Orleans or less important towns> 
what has been done but to destroy or maim thousands of men, and waste or 
consume millions of property, and entail upon ourselves and posterity the 
burdens of an insupportable taxation ? The present generation of young, 
gallant, and hopeful men, with all their divine right to a long and happy life, 
cut down like grass before the scythe, and scattered in unknown graves, and the 
next generation, already bowed with affliction, and struggling from the loss of 
those whose protecting hands this desolating war has folded beneath the sod, 
they, too, must add to their griefs, the toilsome burdens of a life-long taxation, 
and dying, transmit it to their children's children. 

I have said, sir, that the judgment of the impartial nations of Europe has 
already pronounced this war a failure. Are we too vain, or too proud to be 
instructed by these testimonies before our eyes ? Must multiplying visions of 
the dead, the dying, the maimed, or wounded, or sick, yet pass in endless pro- 
cession before our sorrowing eyes ? Are our ears yet longer to be filled with the 
agonies of the poor chilled fireside and home ? Are our tears still to flow for 
these broken hearts, these bereaved women and little children ? And, sir, are 
we here again to measure the toils and miseries of bowed down labor in renew- 
ing exhausting tax bills or repeating schemes of revenue ? I trust not ; but 
hope, by the favor of Heaven, we may at once be spared these horrors, and 
rejoice to see once more the halcyon gleams of peace. 

Mr. Speaker, if this war is to go on, it can only end on the one hand, in the 
subjugation of the South, followed by perpetual strife, the extermination of 
the white or black race, the evils of an immense standing army, and the utter 
extinction of civil liberty there, if not here ; or on the other, in recognition of 
the confederate States as a nation, followed, if we are wise, by re-established 
intercourse and commercial relations, reconciling conflicting interests, and which, 
while preserving peace at home, will, at the same time, secure a union against 
foreign aggression, and be the only means, by the softening influences they will 
present, of restoring any political relations in the future. Sir, a commercial union 
is all that is left for us to consider ; a political union is utterly impossible. The 



15 

sovereignty of the States, their constitutions and laws, the complete systems of 
government ordained and maintained by them will secure every political right, 
or if not, the delegated powers of the Federal or Confederated systems may 
accomplish this. The material interests, the benefits of commerce, will be 
developed and secured by an American zollverein, while the moral or social 
antagonisms which have produced the war, or arc produced by it, will find their 
only protection in the authorities of international law ; and all the sin of 
slavery, all accountability for it here and hereafter, will be forever washed away 
from the shrinking and sensitive souls of the North. 

Separation, recognition, dissolving finally all political and moral relations 
with the non-slaveholding States, now offers the healing balm to the wounded 
breast of the political abolitionist. The earnest struggle his devotion has made 
attests its intensity in the council and the field, and the God of battles who hath 
watched his glowing zeal will vindicate the heroism of his efforts. Let his 
conscience then be calmed. 

Sir, the domestic law — the Constitution and its paper sanctions — has proved 
too weak for human passion — or conscience, if you please — : and the law of 
nations and its dread arbiter, the sword, must hereafter keep the peace of our 
North American continent. 

Mr. Speaker, what can this civil war accomplish ? If the experience of the 
past may answer, it will exclaim, ruin, nothing but ruin, fighting, bloodshed, 
lamentation, desolation, anarchy, despotism. Must it still go on — 

" Never ending, still beginning, 

Fighting still, and still destroying. 

If, sir, the sword is yet to continue the dread arbiter between us, while I do 
not undervalue the courage of the Federal troops, I must yet ask you to con- 
sider the motives, the strength, and resources of the Confederates. 

The fatal policy that a blind fanaticism has directed here and from the "White 
House, has supplied all that was wauting at the South. I do know when I say 
that the despondency which denounced the advent of the Mayflower, and char- 
acterized it as, next to the fall of Adam, the greatest evil that'had afflicted man, 
was relieved when the proclamation of ruin was made against every right of 
property, of liberty, of security at the South. I do know, that when conscrip- 
tion acts were arraying the opposition cot only of the people, but of States,- 
and bringing despair to the hopes of the South, these proclamations raised up 
armed men as volunteers from every spot of ground, and added ten to defend 
the fireside, where conscription demanded five for the confederation. Have you 
considered, sir, with the motives now engaged at the South in supporting this 
fearful contest, the influence this policy must naturally exett over the jninds of 
the Federal troops ? Does the executioner avert his face when the axe falls upon 
the sincere and concientious, though it may be, erring life of a countryman ? 
Sir, the Judge, the President, the Cabinet, the Congress who pronounce the doom 
may sit cold and impassive, removed from the scene ; but neither the soldier of 
the cross or of republican liberty, of Christianity or civilization, will aid to 
strike down home and wife and children. Nut an American soldier, not 
one man, with a soul fit for the destinies of heaven, will execute the horrors 



16 

demanded by these proclamations. Manhood recoiling from such infernal ser- 
vice, the soldiers themselves will stop this war before raising their hands to help 
the merciless and inevitable fate denounced against sleeping women and helpless 
children. Is there a heart of man South, ay, sir, or North, that will not pour 
out its last drop in such a cause ? 

In that memorable speech on conciliation with America, delivered in the 
British Parliament by the great Burke, he discovered some views of our nature 
that may now prove instructive. Speaking for peace then, as I do now, and 
enumerating the influences that distinguished the people of our northern and 
southern colonies, he said : 

" Sir, I can perceive by their mariner that some gentlemen object to the latitude of this descrip- 
tion ; because in the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular 
establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these colonies 
which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more 
high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have 
a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free, are 
by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but 
a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom as in countries where it is a common 
blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, 
with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, among them, like something that is more noble and 
liberal. I do not mean, sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least 
as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of the man. The fact is so; and these 
people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, 
attached to liberty, than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such 
were our Gothic ancestors ; such in our days were the Poles ; and such will be all masters of slaves 
who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the 
spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible." 

Sir, the people of the North are profoundly ignorant equally of the nature 
and characteristics of the white citizen of the South as they are of the nature 
and characteristics of the negro. 

Why, sir, if it be ascertained that we can no longer be united in harmony, in 
peace, bringing prosperity and happiness in their train, why should a union be 
enforced ? 

If the consent of the governed, the consent of so considerable a portion as 
those are who have now dissolved their political relations, be refused ; why compel 
at such fearful cost a union with burning hate, revenge, and eternal discord ? 
There is no free republican Union, no real union of our American States or 
people but such as free consent gives, bringing a willing obedience, loyalty, and 
the principles of public virtue to support it. No other is either worth creating 
or worth preserving. These, sir, were the sentiments of our forefathers, and 
will be of our posterity. If they are not ours, it is because we are blinded by 
passion. 

Mr. Speaker, we are told that the Almighty fixes the boundaries of nations ; 
that the rock-ribbed mountains and the flowing rivers are the eternal ligaments 
that, binding men together in one union, mark the limits of political States, and 
which, being the work of His hands, we must not presumptuously venture to 
disturb ; that geography and the physical things of the earth, and not its peo- 
ples, are the subjects of government. 

This, sir, is a beautiful theory, and admirable for its moral design ; but, the 
history of man and his governments from the beginning of the world refutes it. 



17 

•• What constitutes a State.' 
Not high raised battlements, or labor'd mound, 

Thick wall, or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown 'd ; 

Not bays and broad arm'd ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride : 

Nor starr-d and spangled courts, 
Where low-brow'd baseness wafts perfumes to pride — 

No ! men, high-minded men, 

Men who their duties know, 
But know their rights; and knowing, dare maintain, 

Prevent the long-aimed blow, 
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain— 

These constitute a State." 

Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to enter further into -this inquiry than to point 
to the records geography herself unfolds, all round the world, to overthrow this 
asserted power. I do not venture to deny the influence that the laws of nature 
exert in fixing the boundaries of nations ; but, sir, I dispute their presiding power. 
The limits that separated our colonies, the pride and dominion of State power, 
and even the now warring spirit of secession, are but so many proofs that the 
reformed institutions we have attempted to establish in this New World of ours, 
can find no preserving aid in the physical plans of onr Creator. 

However pleasing to our hopes, or soothing to our anxieties, we must dismiss 
these delusive ideas. Our honorable love of empire, or of union, must yield to 
the nature of man, and, until we can alter it, be contented to find the jurisdic- 
tions, at least of free government, in those boundaries his consent, or his passions 
have fixed. 

Can all the rain that falls upon the Alleghany's sides ; can the swift torrents, 
or the tides that swell the banks of the Potomac, or Rappahannock, or Cumber- 
land, or Mississippi, wash away from kindred hearts the memories of the 
precious blood this cruel war has shed ? Can mountains hide from sorrowing 
eyes those graveyard highways that stretch across the land — 

" Where every turf beneath the feet 
Hath been a soldier's sepulchre : '" 

or rivers sink beneath their beds the whitened bones, that choke their channels 
up ? Can home, and all its fond endearments, smouldering in ashes, be forgot- 
ten ? Can the agony of the broken heart be cured ? Can flaming anger, hate, 
revenge, be soothed ; or pride, ambition, glory, all subdued ? No, Mr. Speaker ; 
you may subjugate, exterminate the southern people, but until you can tear out 
each living heart and throw it to the dogs of war, you can never reunite them 
with you in a political union. 

I shall not stoop to consider in a comparison with the profound motives I 
have here presented, the questions of material interest that may be involved, or 
count in mercenary measures the precious lives of my countrymen. 

Sir, the vital principle of our Union is consent and not force ; and when I 
hear the advocates of the latter appealing to " the nation " and " its unity," 1 
recognize at once the insidious arguments for a centralized power to be erected 
upon the ruins of the Republic. And, the. views that find inevitable force 
in the arrangements of our physical geography, have, I fear, the same unhappy 
tendencv. 



18 

Until my honorable friend from Ohio (Mr. Vallandigham) — whose powerful 
arguments for peace I so much admire, and whose sincere devotion to his coun- 
try I have so much reason to know — can " alter the nature of man," he will 
pardon me for rejecting, as I do, the bright hopes he presents. 

It is the part of wisdom and of duty to recognize the necessities that control 
all human affairs. If we cannot restore all that is lost, let us at least preserve 
what is left. If we cannot re-establish a political union, let us, while saving our 
constitutional liberties, retrieve a union for peace and for commerce. 

Mr. Speaker, the question now before us is between separation and subjuga- 
tion. Let us not deceive ourselves. We must choose between these fearful 
alternatives, and take the olive branch, or closer clutch the sword, I have 
made, sir, my choice, and intend to abide its issue. As I have from the first, so 
I will to the last, stand by the side of peace and constitutional liberty. Eather 
than the havoc of this desolating war with its appalling effects shall be longer 
continued, I would prefer to see the Union, the States, counties, cities, and 
towns, with their governments all separated and dissolved, if peacefully, into the 
elements of society or of nature ; and trust to find in the wants of my fellow- 
men, undebauched by the lawlessness of war, yet purified by the adversity of 
their failure, the principles and motives of a more harmonious reconstruction of 
government. Rather than meet the anarchy or despotism, or both, that are 
now so surely approaching us in the background of this fraternal strife to 
destroy the few remaining sanctions of our Constitution, and sink every hope of 
any union and all free government, I for one would at once stop this war, and, 

RECOGNIZING THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CONFEDERATED STATES, restore peace, 

prospei ity, and happiness ; and then try, in an earnest spirit of conciliation and 
honorable compromise, to regain all that may be practicable. The patriotism 
and valor of our countrymen has been vindicated ; and where duty has been 
honorably discharged, no censures <?an justly rest upon either errors or misfortune. 
To conclude, sir, let me repeat that if I am to be forced to lose either, I prefer 
to save the Constitution of my country at the expense of parting from the 
seceded States. 

" Patria cara, carior Libertas." 



I wish, Mr. Speaker, to give notice of and to present the following resolutions 
which embody the plan of adjustment I intend to propose, and which are sub- 
stantially the same that I presented at the first called session of this Congress : 

Whereas, the deplorable civil war now existing between the States heretofore composing our 
Union has failed to restore it, and if continued longer will destroy all hope of its restoration in the 
future, as originally formed and maintained by our Federal Constitution, and no other political union 
is either desirable or practicable ; and whereas, the interests of humanity, of civilization, and the 
future of free constitutional government, all concur in requiring that this dreadful contest of arms 
should be terminated : Therefore, 

Be it Resolved, 1. That it is the duty of Congress at once to appoint commissioners to effect 

an armistice between the contending armies, and to secure peace at all events. 2. That said com- 
missioners be empowered, by compromise, to restore the Union if possible ; but if not, then to 
arrange the terms of a peaceful separation from the Union, as well of those States which now claim 
to have seceded, as of such others, as, by the will of their people in sovereign conventions assem- 
bled, may hereafter ordain to secede ; and that said commissioners be solemnly enjoined so to 
conduct their negotiations as to secure, by every proper and honorable means, if practicable, a more 
harmonious and permanent reunion of all the States in a commercial, if not a political system. 3. 
That said commissioners make a report of their transactions to Congress as soon as possible, in order 
that such legislation may be provided as may be necessary to assemble the people of the several 
States in convention to determine their action in the premises. 4. That in the event of a refusal by 
the Government of the United States to secure peace, and the only hopes of a reunion upon the 
terms and by the means herein provided, or by some other practicable plan, it is hereby recommended 
to the governments of the several States now composing the Union, at once to take measures to 
effect these objects. 



SPEECH 

OP THE 

HON. HENRY MAY, OF MARYLAND, 

ON THE 

BILL TO INDEMNIFY EXECUTIVE TYRANNY, 

AND TO CONTINUE IT BY 

SUSPENDING THE PRIVILEGE OF THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS, 
Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 18<A, 1863. 



The House having under consideration " An Act to indemnify the President and other persons 
for suspending the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus, and acts done in pursuance thereof—" 

Mr. MAY said : 

Mr. Speaker, — I do not propose so much to discuss the merits of this bill, as 
I do to illustrate its evils. I do not mean so much to oppose it, as I do to show- 
its disastrous effects. I know, sir, that the hill which passed this body, and 
has been returned from the Senate with amendments, will in one of its forms 
ultimately meet an overwhelming support, and it is therefore in vain for any 
one to urge objections in the hope of defeating it. There may be a choice 
proper to be declared now between the two evils ; that presented by the bill 
adopted by the House, and the amendment adopted by the Senate. They are 
very different in their plan and provisions, but they are designed to accomplish 
the same thing. 

The bill passed by this House is a measure that boldly and quickly, takes up 
the very foundations of our system of Government. The scheme which has 
met the approbation of the Senate proposes by a delusive and intricate method, 
to accomplish the same end. The one is an open and absolute adoption of 
tyranny, justifying and discharging it from all accountability for its inflictions ; 
the other turns the sufferer over to the courts, and deceiving him, by the hopes 
of redress, frustrates them all by its artful and arbitrary provisions. 

I find, sir, an insurmountable objection at the threshold of inquiry. In my 
opinion, the Constitution confers upon Congress alone, the power to suspend the 
privilege of the writ of habects corpus, and only where invasion or rebellion 
exists, and nowhere else ; and this is a power that cannot for a moment be 
delegated. The legislative power only can determine when the public safety 
requires this privilege to be suspended ; when, where, how long, and with 
respect to whom such suspension may be applied. Sir, it is the highest exercise 
of sovereign power, since the liberty of the citizen is the corner-stone of 
our system of Government. It was never designed by the founders of our 
Kepublic, that this transcendent and tremendous power over the funda- 



20 

mental rights of personal liberty and personal security, should be exercised 
for an instant of time, by the mere will and discretion of any one man, be he 
President or not. The genius of our Government forbids it. Its history and 
precedents, and the opinions of its founders, and statesmen, and jurists, all 
forbid it. 

The bill provides : 

"That during the existence of this rebellion, the President shall be, and is hereby invested with 
authority to declare the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, at such times 
and in such places, and with regard to such persons as, in his judgment, the public safety may 
require." 

This, sir, in my opinion, erects and commissions despotic power all over 
the United States. 

The House bill is the legitimate product of the ideas of republican liberty 
held by the dominant party of this House. The Senate's amendment 
claims to draw a sanction from a Democratic precedent. This amendment, 
which is, indeed, a substitute for the original bill, claims the example of 
the celebrated force bill of 1833, to justify it. But, the provisions of this 
amendment go infinitely beyond the principle asserted by that law. 

The force bill adopted in General Jackson's d&j, proposed simply a transfer 
of jurisdiction from the State to the Federal courts, in actions brought for 
some alleged wrong committed in the execution of the revenue laws. The 
law of 1833 limited the exercise of the right of transferring the case to the 
period before trial, and there it ceased. 

But here, sir, is a proceeding which gives the right to remove a suit in all 
that comprehensive class of cases brought to redress wrongs committed " under 
color of any authority derived from, or exercised by, or under the President of 
the United States," both before trial, and also after judgment. It gives the 
strange right of an appeal at once from the State to Federal courts : or, if 
the party shall prefer it, " within six months after judgment by writ of error 
or other process," to remove the case from a State to the Federal Circuit 
Court, there " to try and determine the facts and the law, as if the said case 
had been there originally commenced ;" and provided further, " that no such 
appeal or writ of error shall be allowed where the judgment is in favor of the 
defendant in the State court," and if " the plaintiff is non-suited, or judgment 
passed against him, the defendant shall recover double costs." These amend- 
ments further provide, that if the Federal judge shall certify that the defendant 
had probable cause to act, or acted in good faith, then, notwithstanding the 
jury have found otherwise, and a judgment been recovered by the plaintiff, yet 
no execution shall issue until after the next ensuing session of Congress ; thus 
striking down, in effect, the trial by jury in such cases. It is further provided 
that an appeal shall be allowed the defendant to the Supreme Court of the 
United States, " whatever may be the amount of the judgment." 

Am I not authorized, in view of these unheard-of and most monstrous 
provisions of a judicial bill, to say that, while .proposing to promote jus- 
tice, it is simply a mean and cunning scheme, designed purposely to 
frustrate it. 



21 

The measure before us, so far from following the principle of the " force 
bill," flagrantly violates it. That " force bill " simply provided for the impar- 
tial administration of law, by allowing, upon certain prescribed conditions, the 
transfer of jurisdiction. The priuciple it asserted, was supremacy of law. It 
transferred only such suits as were brought to question the execution of a law. 
Its language is " for acts done under the revenue laws of the United States, or 
under color thereof." 

But here the alarming principle is asserted of justifying the acts of the Ex- 
ecutive committed against law. The mere arbitrary will of the President, 
or his agents, " acting under color of his authority," and despoiling the citizen 
of his constitutional rights, is now for the first time, to be vindicated and 
approved by Congress. Congress ought to feel insulted and outraged by such a 
proposition. 

I need hardly add, that I shall vote against these measures. 

After the eloquent and exhaustive argument of my friend from Indiana, 
[Mr. Voorhees,] there can be no need of further authorities to support the 
indefeasible title of an American citizen to that blessed writ of habeas corpus, 
which is now to be surrendered. 

I beg leave only to add a single reference to that fountain of instruction, the 
Commentaries of Blackstone, and trust this House may be refreshed by the 
pure and undefiled principles of civil liberty upon the subject before us, as 
pronounced by this jurisprudent of a monarchy : 

" Of great importance to the public is the preservation of personal liberty, for if once it were 
left in the power of any, the highest magistrate, to imprison arbitrarily whosoever he or his officers 
thought proper, there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. Some have 
thought that unjust attacks, even upon life or property, at the arbitrary will of the magistrate^ 
are less dangerous to the Commonwealth than such as are made upon the personal liberty of 
the subject. To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate without accusation 
or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism as must at once convey the alarm 
of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom; but confinement of the person by secretly hurrying 
him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and 
therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government; and yet sometimes when the State 
is in real danger, even this may be a necessary measure. But the happiness of our Constitution 
is, that it is not left to the executive power to determine when the danger of the State is so great 
as to render this measure expedient ; for it is the Parliament only, or legislative power that, when 
ever it sees proper, can authorize the Crown, by suspending the habeas corpus act for a short and 
limited time, to imprison suspected persons without giving any reasons for so doing. But this 
experiment ought only to be tried in cases of extreme emergency, and in these the nation parts with 
its liberty for a while in order to preserve it forever." 

I repeat, with emphasis, " for a short and limited period." 

Such, is "the doctrine of the British constitution. Is ours less'free ? This 
bill confers an absolute power on the President, by his own mere will, to sus- 
pend the privilege of that great writ, for " such time and in such places, and 
with regard to such persons as, in his judgment, the public safety may require." 
Sir, for one, I prefer to enact at once that " Abraham Lincoln rule as all 
absolute monarchs rule ;" and let him declare his powers in the words : 

" Sic volo sic jubeo ; 
Stat pro ralione voluntas." 

Need I remind this House, for an illustration, of the memorable case which 
occurred in a British court, in which were enunciated the ideas of civil liberty 



22 

which pervade the jurisprudence of that realm ? An humble citizen of a 
British province, having been arrested and imprisoned without trial, by the 
Governor of that province, sued him for it in England. The defense set 
up was a sort of divine right, or right of military or judicial power, or 
all these together, lodged in the office of the Governor, which authorized 
him to suspend the personal liberty of the subject at his mere will and 
discretion. 

Such was the argument urged before that great judge, Lord Mansfield, 
who rebuked it at once in the memorable declaration : 

" I say that, for many reasons, if this action did not lie against any other man, it shall most 
emphatically lie against the Governor." 

Sir, I commend to the attention of this American House of Representatives, 
this noble judicial declaration, which throws so tenderly the sanctions of the 
law around the liberty of the citizen, and especially protects it against the 
aggressions of supreme power. 

Let me add to this another, but not a less glorious instruction. If the 
oppression of an humble subject gave rise, as history informs us, to the great 
writ of habeas corpus of Charles II., so the oppression of an upright citizen 
of Maryland, has produced the noblest exposition of its principles. 

Providence seems to have preserved the lengthened life of that illustrious 
judge who presides over our national judiciary, and to have added fresh vigor 
to his great intellect and high spirit of independence, that he might vindicate 
the supremacy of law amid the passions of revolution and the clash of arms. 

" As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm. 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 

Sir, it is the pride and consolation of Maryland, in the midst of her afflic- 
tions, that she gave both the prisoner and the judge, to make the grandest 
exposition of the highest right of constitutional government ; and the opinion 
in the habeas corpus case of Merryman will never die, while freedom lives. 
The spirit of the Constitution presiding in that great judicial declaration, 
sternly forbids the passage of this bill. 

But, Mr. Speaker, I turn now to different thoughts, and will attempt to 
illustrate the evils of this bill and show the wrongs it practically justifies. I 
present them with extreme repugnance, and know I cannot expect here to 
find much approbation of my views. They are addressed rather to my 
constituents, to my fellow-citizens of Maryland, and to the friends of con- 
stitutional liberty. My own pride, and the devotion I ought in this season 
of their oppression, to cherish for the people of my State, require this declara- 
tion. I wish, sir, now that an awakened public sentiment removing restraints 
and restoring here some freedom of speech, gives the opportunity, for the first 
time, to say what I think, and give expression to feelings that no caution can 
make me distrust. I intend to speak with that freedom which is my privilege, 
and now especially becomes the duties of this place. I do so under the shelter 
of the Constitution. 

To this House alone am I responsible. While I do not invite the infliction 



23 

of arbitrary power, I solemnly protest against and defy it. Having accepted 
the office of a Representative, solely in the hope of humbly aiding to preserve 
peace, and through it our country, when Passion, hurling down the Consti- 
tution and the laws, came here to preside, it was then my wish, as I declared 
on the first day I entered this Hall, to retire from its useless, its hopeless, and 
mortifying scenes. 

I knew that bitter hate, resentment, and jealousy, planted by studied 
misrepresentation at the North, against Baltimore; and nourished and in- 
flamed by the sinister aims of some of our own unworthy people, would 
proscribe me as its Representative, unless I proved subservient. The sudden 
unpremeditated violence of a riot, not unknown to the cities of the North, 
and to all large cities, was referred to a deep laid conspiracy of a whole people, 
and their municipal authorities, who bravely and faithfully did all that could 
be done, to prevent, resist, and overcome it. I but repeat the testimony of 
the military officers who were assailed, and also of the then Executive of 
Maryland, who now sits as a Senator in this Capitol. But, sir, I scorn to 
offer now a defense of Baltimore. The fruitless attempts that I have made 
to do this in every form of earnest, yet respectful effort — the now prostrate 
condition of that beautiful, and hospitable city — the abject spirit and degraded 
situation of its municipal authorities — the utter subjugation of its people, must 
deny any further attempt of that bitter task to me. 

Sir, I prefer, and they whom I represent also prefer, to cast our disgust, 
contempt, defiance, upon our oppressors. Despising equally the censures or 
the praises of the prejudiced and the unjust, I disown for my constituents the 
sympathies of those who, here or elsewhere, have proved indifferent to the 
brutal oppressions under which the people of Baltimore, and all the manly 
people of Maryland have suffered ; Maryland, the bright morning star of civil 
and religious freedom ; the only spot at its settlement where, as your historian, 
Bancroft, exclaims, " religious liberty found its home, its only home, in the wide 
world." 

The sacred right of suffrage being overthrown in my District, by military 
power, left me no refuge from the cares and vexations of this place, and I 
have preferred to suffer the trials and mortifications that I have endured, 
rather than create a vacancy to be filled by some minion of Executive power, 
and thus add the bitterest of humiliations to my constituents and to myself. 

Sir, it is most unpleasant to dwell upon what may appear to be matters of 
personal concern, especially at a time when appalling national misfortunes 
surround us. But it is only from their connection with public liberty, with 
the principles of constitutional government, that they deserve our notice. 

Upon the first day that I took my seat in this Congress, and claimed the 
privilege of vindicating my conduct from aspersions that newspaper gossip 
had created about a visit that I undertook, to Richmond, with the knowledge of 
the President and General Scott, for the sake of peace and our Union, and to 
soften the horrors of a civil war, and on which a paltry spirit of prying malice 
had founded a proceeding to expel me from this House, how, sir, was I not 
treated ? With what rude and clamorous injustice ; and, though supported by 
the Speaker in the scope of my remarks, I was, by a heavy vote of this House 



24 

overruling his decision, forced to abandon the attempt. As affecting me per- 
sonally, that proceeding was insignificant. But, sir, it was a blow struck at 
the Representative principle, by those who had been created by its breath. 
How often have I not on every occasion since then, been denied even the 
privilege of a word of explanation, and that, too, upon subjects relating 
exclusively to my own constituents ? 

How often have not my efforts to call attention to the most flagrant and 
admitted violations of the Constitution and laws, or tbe most scandalous 
oppressions against the rights of my constituents and State, under forms of 
law, been frustrated by ill-disguised malice, objecting in perverted minds ? 
The dominating will of the majority, administering the rules of this House, 
and trampling into the dust the spirit of parliamentary law and the Consti- 
tution, has absolutely, in effect, disfranchised the 4th Congressional District 
of Maryland. 

By indignant speech, by truth-bearing, yet respectful memorials ; by reso- 
lutions for information, by resolutions to promote investigation, by proposing 
measures of legislation ; by all these means have I earnestly tried to present, 
inquire into, and redress the most crying oppressions inflicted upon my consti- 
tuents or fellow-citizens of Maryland. And how have I not approached 
Executive power by every form of remonstrance, intercession, or appeal, 
consistent with my own and the dignity of the injured. Invoking tbe aid 
of others possessed of influence with tbe Administration, I have bitterly vexed 
and mortified my own sensibilities, already too severely tried ; and exhausted all 
the patience and fortitude that nature, adding sympathy to duty, in vain 
attempted to supply. 

Sir, all these efforts have failed, and the single right of voting, with the 
dignity of silence, (but not submission,) was all that remained to me of the 
rights, privilege, and influence of a Representative. 

Mr. Speaker, Congress had scarcely adjourned its first session,- and that 
Constitutional privilege that protects the presence of its members was no 
sooner gone, than that other and higher one — for what is the presence of a 
Representative worth, if free speech be denied ? — that provision which gives 
immunity from accountability elsewhere than to this House, for. the legislative 
actions and conduct of its members, was ruthlessly violated. 

The skulking minions of power had gathered around its footstool, and 
whispering their falsehoods into willing ears, hoped to retrieve the disap- 
pointments of ambition, or secure the rewards of a consuming avarice, by 
denouncing the just, the virtuous, the independent. Informers, spies, and 
detectives swarming from Washington, with full license against law and 
liberty, surrounded the outspoken or fearless friend of his country. 

Authority, which had meanly prostituted itself to popular clamor, had 
pledged " the loss of its right arm rather than raise it against a sister State 
of the South ;" had protested with indignant words against the landing of 
Federal troops to desecrate the soil of the State capital, and "jestingly/' it is 
said, inquired for men of Maryland " to kill Lincoln's men :" — white-livered 
wretches who were palsied with fear, or who fled at the shadows that popular 
tumult had cast over Baltimore ; aspirants for high stations, or low places, resolved 



25 

to obtain them whether by the force of bayonets, or the trickeries of fraud ; 
contractors, jobbers, and plunderers, assembling together and distorting events 
by the aid of a degraded press — a venal and depraved press — that has openly 
confessed its shame for having avowed an honest and manly opinion ; mer- 
chants, and bankers, and men who had subscribed large sums to provide arms 
for the tise of our city authorities, at a time of apprehended conflict with the 
General Government — these, all together cried out, and echoed back with new 
born loyalty, "the Union, the Union, the unconditional Union/' and were 
forthwith hailed by an alarmed Executive, as the appointed patriots of the 
State. 

" Vipers that creep where man disdains to climb, 
And having wound" their loathscme track 
To the top of this huge mouldering monument of Rome, 
Hang hissing at the nobler man below." 

Sir, I do not intend to include in this denunciation those citizens who, with 
a genuine patriotism, have sustained the Union, and yet sustain it by military 
coercion, however much I differ from their views. I refer only to the selfish, 
the malicious, the calculating actors in the sad drama of our subjugation. 

Mr. Speaker, even the first in rank among the soldiers of the Republic, 
yielded to the base contagion of arbitrary power. He who has won the 
triumph of a Northern renown — but not a victory — became the partner and the 
tool of a conspiracy against the sovereignty of a Commonwealth, ever loyal to 
that Constitution which its sages and heroes had so greatly assisted to create and 
maintain. By his order, that political ruffian called "'military necessity," 
extinguished the legislative power of Maryland, and took captive the liberties 
of its best citizens. The destruction of our Legislature by force of arms, was 
the grossest act of treason against the guarantees of our Constitutional Govern- 
ment. It was as foul an act of tyranny as was ever committed. The Federal 
Government then knew that, so far from intending to pass, or in any way 
promote an act of secession, the Legislature had absolutely declined so to do by 
its public proceedings. This foulest crime of our century has no pretext to 
cover it. 

Such, sir, were the hard conditions of a soldier's service in a premeditated 
plot to destroy the independence of a border slave-holding State, and which was 
first revealed by a ridiculous midnight flight, designed to awaken distrust and 
hostility* at the North. 

The written proofs of this conspiracy exist, and will be produced in better 
days, when the parties implicated shall dare to deny them. 

The armed agents of the Executive Government, at midnight, invaded my 
own home, and the homes of my fellow-citizens, and without any process or 
written authority whatever, forcibly arrested and conveyed a large number of 
our principal citizens, and State and city officers, to several military bastiles, 
under circumstances of restraint and treatment, worse than are visited in civilized 
countries upon the most abandoned of convicted malefactors. 

I declare that without an accusation, process or examination — nay, sir, 
refusing to make a charge, or hear a defence, and with no charge to this hour 
alleged, were these unoffending citizens shut up within the walls of a damp, and 



26 

filthy casemate — the light of the sun, the open air, and exercise, all these 
denied — not one among us permitted to cross the threshold of our prison den, 
where iron bars were added to aid the bayonet of the sentinel, and prevent 
escape, already impossible, from the triple securities of Fortress Monroe. In 
vain was the offer of a prisoner's parole for the sake of health within the walls 
of the fort ; in vain, remonstrance. Sir, imagination must supply the disgust- 
ing details that made this weary fortnight an imprisonment such as only 
beasts are subjected to. And will it be credited, when I add, that finally, 
remonstrance, appealing to the relic of a soldier's pride, brought out the 
admission from General Wool, that our treatment was so ordered by the 
Government at Washington. 

"O! shame, where is thy 'blush.'" 

That depraved nature, which afterwards produced an atrocious order making 
it a crime to ask for counsel, and denounced prolonged imprisonment as the 
penalty for claiming this constitutional right, must answer ; and the Secretary 
of State, stand confessed, the author of this glory. 

Carried upon an unsafe steamer, then seeking repairs, these prisoners of 
State, barely escaping the dangers of the autumnal equinox, were thrust 
among the dreary cells and batteries of Fort Lafayette, crowded together like 
cattle in the shambles ; there for months to be driven from wall to shed, from 
sunshine to the chilling shade, by the bayonet of the half-civilized imported 
soldier, until the drum, denying the solace of a poor dim candle, also hushed 
the voice of social intercourse, and closed the miseries of the day. Then, sir, 
meditation came to the cot of the victim, and prostrating all his hopes as a 
citizen, told of the empty glories of that higher aspiration "Excelsior ;" and 
darkness, and the sovereignty of the Empire State, together sullenly brooded 
over the scene of this brutal tyranny. Fort Warren next claimed the custody 
of these devoted prisoners, and there oppression satiated itself. At length, 
musing exultingly over the Bay State's boasting motto in the vain words, " Ense 
petit placidam sub libertate quietam," and having sufficiently honored the great 
Commonwealths of New York and Massachusetts as its chosen asylums, Execu- 
tive Tyranny suddenly and capriciously released its victims. 

Without accusation or defense, without explanation given or received, with 
nothing but suffering endured by themselves, and those whom nature had bound 
to them on the one side, and the joys such suffering gave on the other, these 
citizens of a free constitutional republic, were cast out abruptly from*a cruel 
imprisonment of more than fourteen months' duration. 

But, sir, if tyranny was crowned by these transactions in our free United 
States of America, it found no subjects to concede its realm among those just 
and fearless men of Maryland. Their spirit, unshaken through all the suffer- 
ings they endured, defied the terrors of their persecution. They would have 
preferred death to bringing any dishonor on their citizenship. Their crime 
consisted in standing up manfully for the constitutional rights of their State, 
and the demands of duty under its laws. Animated by the principles that 
ever support such a duty in patriotic breasts, they came out of the bastile as 
free, as proud in spirit, as they had entered it. They attested the integrity and 
innocence of their actions and thoughts, by spurning every offered concession to 



27 

power. They could not be forced to sacrifice principle for the sake of personal 
liberty. It is a proud fact that many of the humblest citizens of Maryland, 
imprisoned all over the land, under circumstances of the utmost privation and 
suffering, in camps or common prisons, maintained this noble attitude to 
the last. And, sir, numbers of them yet maintain it. It is the genuine spirit 
of American constitutional liberty. The example afforded by their firmness 
and constancy will go upon the enduring pages of history, and invite the admira- 
tion of their countrymen, while eternal infamy awaits those who have oppressed 
them. 

The liberating power of money had soon availed the richest among these 
prisoners, and a good and fearless citizen, and legislator of our State, against 
whom the suborned press, and miscreant crew of informers, had clamored as the 
guiltiest traitor of them all, after a few days confinement, walked from the 
prison in a mist of gold. 

Another, less fortunate in the dispensations of God, had been released that 
he might stand at the grave of a loved and gallant brother, whose wounds 
received in the battles of his country, and a long hard service in its navy, had 
cut short his useful life. In vain, sir, did this prisoner plead for two hours' 
parole before he was removed from his State, that he might bid the last adieu 
to this dying brother, and hear from his brave lips the words of love, of bless- 
ing, and of fortitude. In vain did this brother's well-earned claims entreat 
this small boon of the soul's appeal. Communicated to the authorities in 
Washington, by them it was refused. 

Mr. Speaker, that jailor Secretary of State, insensible to this pious duty, with 
soul abandoned of man and God, waking, perhaps from some debauch, heard 
that dying appeal only when the fall of the rattling " earth to earth," proclaim- 
ed the triumph of his malice ; and then mocking with hypocritical compassion 
the most sacred feelings of the heart, moved by his order the prison to the 
grave. 

Sir, the monuments that patriotism has raised in the congressional cemetery, 
to mark the ashes of the illustrious Gerry and Clinton, of Pinkney, and of 
Wirt, were the mute witnesses of this scene, and recognized there in the person 
of the prisoner, a Kepresentative whose only crime was in trying to preserve 
the principles of a Government they had so nobly assisted to erect, or maintain. 
And, although demanded over and over again, to this hour that Secretary has 
never signified what statue, or even moral obligation, had been, or was even 
suspected, might be violated. And that prisoner now declares here before the 
Searcher of all hearts his utter ignorance of any ground for this atrocious 
tyranny, unless it be found in his public acts as a member of this body. 

Sir, when the efforts of a Representative arc in this way met and arrested by 
arbitrary power ; when the privileges that are sheltered here by the Constitution 
are thus wrested away ; when reason, argument, and remonstrance are answered 
by the infliction of a brutal imprisonment; when the earnest, heartfelt plead- 
ings for right, lor Constitutional libertj^, offered in this place, consecrated to its 
cause ; when the soul-inspired hopes and plans of peace here proposed ; when 
the obligations of that solemn covenant administered by the Speaker's hands 
are answered : — when all these arc answered by the ruthless privation of all 

4 



28 

privilege, of all peace, of all liberty ; and when, alas, this is submitted to by the 
representatives of the people, and not a voice raised to protest against it, not a 
whisper of discontent heard here, to this hour, to question it, excepting only in 
the eloquent effort of my honorable friend from Indiana, (Mr. Voorhees,) just 
now delivered, must we not desjjairingly exclaim, where has the life of our 
republic gone, where its manhood, where its Constitution, where the spirit of 
independence that nourished by it, defended it, where the fidelity, the conscience 
pledged before God to support and protect it ? Why, sir, why have these, 
the only hopes to keep and bless our future of free government in the surround- 
ing gloom, why have these forsaken us ? 

Sir, the spirit of Democratic principle cherished in the breasts of the small 
circle upon this side of the House, was yet too feeble to vindicate the Constitu- 
tion, thus violated in the person of a member of its party. It was powerless. 
I repeat that it is most painful to me to present a relation of these personal 
incidents, which are only deserving of notice from the violence done to my repre- 
sentative character. 

Mr. Speaker, usurpation has done its work, and, with a sorrowing breast, I 
am forced to declare my conviction that the glory of our United States, its 
incomparable Constitution, is finally destroj r ed, and a centralized despotism 
erected upon its ruins — struck through its vitals by that Chief Magistrate, 
especially elected and sworn before his countrymen at this Capitol, to protect 
and defend it. And, sir, history will add upon its enduring rolls to the name 
of Abraham Lincoln, the names also of those representatives of the States and 
of the people, who have aided this unholy deed. Incapable of comprehending, 
or not appreciating, and utterly reckless of the priceless principles of our Con- 
stitution, the fanaticism of our present rulers has ruined the grandest work of 
man. 

The Legislature of Maryland, and local authorities of Baltimore, were, by 
brute force of Federal power, crushed out of existence — a legislature that 
declining in absolute terms to aid any plans of secession, yet, with a noble 
devotion, asserted its fealty to the Federal Constitution, and by denouncing its 
invaders, incurred the guilt of independence ; a city government that having 
bravely met every responsibility of duty, become criminal only when it per- 
sisted in obeying the laics. Our right of suffrage was soon destroyed. A base 
conspiracy of men, holding and disgracing the highest civil and military sta- 
tions, both at Washington and in our own State, by force of Federal power 
and a deliberate plan, accomplished this shameful deed. I say, sir, what I do 
know. The fortunes of war, Mr. Speaker, sometimes make strange revelations, 
and truth, though crushed by the heel of one soldier, may yet arise by the 
sword of another. 

Sir, the sovereignty of our State thus insulted, outraged and trodden into the 
dust, Maryland became a subjugated province, and now continues such. Not a 
single State right, not one constitutional guarantee remaining — not one. A 
faithless Governor, true only to the miserable influences that appointed him, 
has surrendered to military power the trusts of the high office he has usurped, 
and even joined in festive mirth to celebrate the transferred majesty of our laws, 
and welcome with applauding speech the conquering hero of his fears. The 



29 

appeals of suffering or pilaged citizens pass by unheeded, and every marauding 
soldier, with our Governor's assent, now defies the power of the State, 

A servile Legislature, whose members, with a few honorable exceptions, were 
also the mere creatures of military power, hastened by pains and penalties to 
fasten the yoke upon our people, and laws against fundamental right, believed 
to have been dictated at Washington, now disgrace our statute-book. 

The contented slaves of our people, happy until corrupted in their humble 
cabin homes, and satisfied under the mild and tolerant spirit that commands 
their labor, and provides for every want, happier, far happier than the toiling 
bondman of the Eastern hemisphere, are forced away against their consent, in 
a defiant and public way by officers of rank, seeking promotion by such merit. 
Separated from the associations and affections of the master's family, and their 
own, these poor victims of the blasting civilization of the North, are seduced 
from slavery only to be cast helpless and friendless upon the chance charity of 
their deliverers; or the brutal assaults of an affronted soldiery. Sir, the poor 
children of Africa have been visited by sore afflictions, but this mercy of the 
Abolitionists is the heaviest of their calamities. And it is so considered by all 
the intelligent among themselves ; and the future will soon prove how utterly 
heartless is this miserable speculation upon the destinies of the African race, 
and, which, if it succeeds, must destroy these poor victims of its blighting care. 
Sir, our slaves are enticed into camps or hospitals established all over the 
State, and there enforced to remain by " military protection," directed by the 
Federal Executive, until they are transported beyond the State, to complete 
this scandalous scheme of larceny. 

Fugitive slaves arrested here in this District, created by the design of recent 
legislation, as a refuge against the obligation of the supreme law, are no sooner 
committed by judicial authority to await the demand of the owner under the 
guarantees of the Constitution, than armed soldiers of the provost guard, by 
force, release and set them free. The musket has taken the place of the deed of 
manumission. In vain has the marshal, the friend and daily companion of the 
President, remonstrated against such lawlessness. Sir, this base and fraudulent 
scheme of robbing the people of Maryland of their property, yet goes on. 

The negro slave is indeed, in some respects, the only free man in Maryland ; 
for while military surveillance inspects the social visits of the master, and a 
pass alone gives him the privilege of the highway, the slave goes freely, and is 
aided on his way. 

Restrictions on our internal trade and commerce, in palpable violation of the 
Constitution and repeated decisions of the Supreme Court, are established by 
the Department of the Treasury, and a delegated discretion to understrappers 
in our custom houses has inflicted and yet maintains most vexatious, burden- 
some, and expensive conditions upon our people. Rigorous rules that press 
upon an entire population are made a pretext to screen the worthless vigilance 
that ought to guard the lines that separate contending armies. Sir, as they are 
not imposed in the exercise of any military power, we must conclude they are 
designed simply to oppress us. 

Boards of Trade, (unknown to law,) created of petty politicians, search the 
breasts of every man and woman, and by oaths and fees harrass each household 



30 

in its demands for food or clothing, or other necessaries of life, only to be 
obtained in Baltimore, thus assailing its prosperity and discriminating in favor 
of other ports and places. And even the sacred liberty of conscience is pro- 
scribed at its very birthplace on our continent, and the Catholic citizen of 
Maryland by " Know-Nothing " officials required " to swear over the sign of 
the cross," after taking the usual oath -on the Holy Evangely. I have, sir, 
already offered to submit the conclusive evidence of this fact to a committee of 
this House. It cannot with truth be denied. 

Our private papers have been forcibly seized and brought to Washington, and 
are yet detained in the State Department. Property of all kinds is seized, and 
carried off openly and habitually by agents of the Federal Government, or its 
marauding troops, and confiscations, mocking judicial authority, are pronounced 
by the captors themselves. In vain does the owner demand either compensa- 
tion or security, or, often times, even the evidence of a receipt for it. I am 
now, sir, referring to seizures of the property of our citizens at their homes, 
and without a pretext alleged for seizing it. 

Mr. Speaker, the property of our citizens has been seized under these circum- 
stances and brought here to Washington, and after considerable portions of it 
had been appropriated by the agents of the United States, the residue delivered 
up to the owner upon payment of heavy sums as ransoms, by order of the then 
military governor here, one General Wadsworth. With no evidence to seize, 
or hold, or condemn the property after being thus pillaged, it is, at the expense 
of a heavy transportation to the owner, returned to him upon the payment of a 
sum of money ; and this, with a full knowledge, by this governor, of all the 
facts ; and to crown this outrage, the owner was subjected to a long imprison- 
ment in the Old Capitol prison, simply for stating these things. 

Sir, not only are property and liberty thus outraged, but the securities of 
home are habitually invaded,_ and alarm carried into the bosoms of our wives 
and children, by the rude and violent conduct of undisciplined soldiers. I am 
able to state instances where such brutal visits have destroyed the lives of help- 
less women, or paralized them by premeditated alarms. What has been my 
own case will serve to illustrate hundreds of others more aggravated, and of 
frequent occurrence. 

But a few days before this session of Congress begun, a vulgar ruffian, who 
holds the title of provost marshal of Talbot county, during my absence, with a 
troop of dragoons visited my country home, and planting men with weapons 
drawn around the house, without warrant or order, o^: any process, proceeded to 
search and open every place and portion of my premises, breaking locks and 
doors, and desecrating every privacy of home. Neither the situation of defence- 
less wife and children, nor those prescriptive guards that create the castle of 
the home, nor the sacred injunctions of a Constitution that forbids such searches, 
could restrain the unlicensed powers emanating from the Secretary of War. Sir, 
under his general order, as it was alleged, a small pistol that another and 
younger brother who now sleeps in his grave, had carried fighting the enemies 
of his country through the war with Mexico, and that came to me as a me- 
mento of him, was seized and carried away as a trophy of this exploit, or proof 
of a magazine that had made my residence so terrible a place. 



31 

Sir, that search was designed as an outrage, as a menace. The miserable tool 
who committed it, after closing all places where stimulus was sold within the 
county, was soon convicted by military authority of selling, with his own hands, 
behind the counter of a low tavern, kept by himself, whisky to soldiers, and, I 
believe, to negroes. Nevertheless, he remains a provost marshal of the War 
Department, with despotic powers. Such are the emanations of Federal 
authority, which have displaced our State judiciary, and now dominate over 
our people. Free speech, a free press — those boasts of American liberty — are 
prostrate in the dust. But, sir, the swaggering minions of power are licensed 
to speak, to print what they please, and scurrilous newspapers are even bold 
enough to attempt to command the action of this House against its members. 
The house of God, even, is invaded by military power, and the flag of our 
country, the symbol of civil and religious freedom, gains its first victory over 
the sacred rights of conscience in the hands of a Federal General in Baltimore, 
and a faithful minister of God is arrested and imprisoned for defending these, 
his inalienable rights. And even women and little children are arrested and 
oppressed for showing gaudy ribbons so shocking to the sensitive imaginations 
of a prurjent loyalty. And, sir, how shall I describe the taunts, the insults, the 
threats, the violence, that have assailed the pride, the dignity, the helpless 
spirit, of our down-trodden men and women and children of Maryland. Words 
cannot attempt it. 

Mr. BINGHAM. I desire to ask the gentleman from Maryland a question. 

Mr. MAY. I yield, with pleasure, to the gentleman from Ohio. 

Mr. BINGHAM. I desire to know from the gentleman to what minister he 
refers ? 

Mr. MAY. I allude to the Eev. Mr. Dashiel, of the Methodist Episcopal 
church. 

Mr. BINGHAM. When was he arrested ? 

Mr. MAY. A few days ago. 

Mr. BINGHAM. I desire to know from the gentleman from Maryland what 
this minister was arrested for ? 

Mr. MAY. He was arrested because he dared to remove from his own 
church, from his own property, where a religious society has been in the habit 
of worshipping God, a flag which had been surreptitiously placed there in the 
night by some evil-minded person. 

Mr. BINGHAM. Was it the flag of the United States ? 

Mr. MAY. It was the flag of the United States. 

Mr. BINGHAM. Does the gentleman pretend that the minister owned the 
church ? 

Mr. MAY. I affirm that fact. He has either a lease of the property or it 
belongs to him absolutely. It is a place where he has instructed youth during 
the week, and led his congregation to worship God on the Sabbath. 

Mr. Speaker, I have no patience for this sort of vain flourishing of flags here. 
I am sick of it. I do not respect our national flag when it is planted in opposi- 
tion to those divine rights of which it is a high and glorious emblem. When 
high advanced, sir, in the service of our country's Constitution, and to maintain 
its laws, it shall ever win from me the applause of my heart's heart. But when 



32 

any man dares, intoxicated with notions of military power, to set up a gross 
tyranny in this free land, and takes that emblem to strike the sacred rights of 
conscience, he shall be denounced by me, although the victim of his oppression 
may be the humblest of my fellow-citizens. 

I feel authorized, sir, to speak as I do in this case. This faithful and upright 
minister of the Gospel is my constituent ; and I am acquainted with the cir- 
cumstances of the case. 

The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Bingham] will find, if he takes the trouble of 
investigating the facts of the case, that the account I have given is correct. I 
have been prepared with a resolution of inquiry about this affair, and tried to 
offer it ; and if I have an opportunity of doing so, and it be adopted, I will 
undertake to prove before the Committee on the Judiciary, of which the gentle- 
man and myself are members, the facts which I relate. 

Mr. Speaker, is it because we have been too weak to resist these oppressions, 
that we have been forced to submit to them ? Sir, we are oppressed because we 
are defenceless. 

Does a Marylander hear the recital of that infernal outrage that dragged from 
the bench where he was presiding, an honored and fearless judge, and, attempt- 
ing his life, scattered his blood over the ermine of justice, and laid him insensible 
upon the floor, simply because he openly declared his respect for and claimed 
obedience to the Constitution? Does any true-hearted American know that 
such brutality was approved and justified by a cruel and prolonged imprison- 
ment of that judge, inflicted by order of the Executive, with a full knowledge 
of the facts, and that such a wrong is yet unredressed — nay, sir, yet approved, 
justified, praised — and the ruffians who inflicted it are now revelling amidst the 
ruins of our .laws and liberties, with superadded authority and force, emanating 
from Washington ? 

Sir, I repeat — does any Marylander, does any man of America, hear these 
things, and not feel that God-inspired instinct of resistless power awakened in 
free hearts, that ever hath crushed despotism, and ever will ? 

Mr. Speaker, after this recital, let me be justified by simply repeating what is 
written in the Constitution, article fourth of the amendments : 

" The right of the people, to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against 
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon 
probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched 
and the person or things to be seized." 

Sir, what efforts have I not made with every circumstance of respect for the 
dignity and rules of this House, and in every form of application attempted to 
gain a consideration of these heavy, insupportable grievances of Maryland ; and 
what single one has received even the cold ceremony of a reception ? Not one ! 
But all rejected with insulting haste, or " laid upon the table," to rest there 
forever. 

Maryland is treated here, too, as a subjugated province. Stripped of 
every attribute of her sovereignty, a caucus of revolutionary fanatics has 
appointed our rulers, and Ohio and Illinois furnished the pro-consuls of our 
conquered State, Mr. Bingham and Ldvejoy. If the Federal Constitution had 
guaranteed to Maryland the curse of a despotism, instead of a " Republican 



33 

form of government," its duty in this respect could not have been more faith- 
fully kept. 

But, surrounded as she is by misfortunes, it is now, and shall continue to be 
the glory of Maryland, that her prostrate constitution and laws, her subjugated 
people attest their spirit and patriotism, in meeting and defying the encroach- 
ments of arbitrary power, that they were too feeble by force to oppose. With 
true republican pride, her citizens can repeat her noble declaration of rights, 
that " the doctrine of non-resistance to arbitrary power, is absurd, slavish, and 
destructive to the peace and happiness of mankind." And, repeating it, appeal 
to Heaven as witness, that its precious injunction has been faithfully kept, and 
yet abides firmly in their hearts ; and I must, sir, in a spirit of admonition, now 
and here declare my conviction, that the people of Maryland will and ought, by 
arms, to defend their constitutional rights, if longer trampled on ; and let the 
bloodshed rest on the souls of the aggressors, or the authority that encourages 
or permits their lawlessness. 

Mr. Speaker, Maryland, though now prostrate, will again rise. When 
passion and brute force shall have passed away, or be driven from her soil, and 
the benign genius of free government returns again to preside over her destinies ; 
then, her own people, if united and organized, will be able themselves to deter- 
mine her lot. Let them be assured of this, and also be prepared. And then, also, 
comes a retribution. And while we may hope that her faithless children, who 
have stood indifferent to her fate, may be forgiven ; yet, sir, they must not be for- 
gotten ; but those self-abasing wretches who, with parricidal hands, have helped 
to strike their own State's sovereignty down, shall rest in the full assurance of 
that day of account that must come, in the sure providence of God. And, sir, 
instructed by the language of the present Secretary of State, addressed to mf 
constituents, in a lecture delivered by him on the 22d of December, 1848, " if 
a separation from the Union shall ever be necessary, let us hope that long 
habits of discipline and mutual affection, may enable the American people to 
add another and final lesson on the excellence of Republics — that of dividing 
without violence, and re-constructing withoid the loss of liberty." Heaven grant 
that such may be the happy destiny of Maryland. 

Mr. Speaker, could I be persuaded to believe that any friend of the Constitu- 
tion would impute these views to feelings of a personal resentment, it would 
inflict upon me inexpressible pain. And, sir, could I hear that any pure- 
minded and pure-hearted citizen of my State — 

" A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, — 
And greatly falling with a falling State," — 

could justly accuse me of a failure to meet the sternest demands of duty, in this 
crisis of our national calamity, I should go, sir, to my final accountability with 
an embittered life. 

Amidst the cares and perplexities, the anxieties and excitements, that in this 
unhappy season of national trial have surroundad the duties of public life, we 
may have erred in finding or in following them. But if a disinterested love of 
country ; if self-denial and a devotion to the duties of the Constitution and 
welfare of our fellow-citizens ; if a readiness to incur responsibility, except that 



34 

which provokes oppression, without the means to resist or redress it ; if a judg- 
ment that hesitates to defy reckless power, only to inflict or prolong its suffer- 
ings upon others ; if that sense of public accountability that cares for the many 
while sympathizing with the few, and refuses, at the demand of any, to resign 
the trust for all ; if a spirit of moderation and conciliation, putting aside resenf- 
ment, and presiding over all passion for the sake of peace, of human life, for 
free government, for the future of civil liberty ; if, sir, these aims and motives, 
preserving and seeking the opportunities that public confidence has bestowed to 
do all practicable good, if these cannot support and protect a representative, and 
preserve his name from reproach, then, sir, not only has the Constitution failed, 
but man, the citizen, has also failed. 

The present prostrate condition of Maryland, and the alienation of her people, 
has been caused entirely by the lawless policy pursued by the Federal Govern- 
ment, and its unscrupulous agents. 

Not a solitary act against law, or their Federal relations, can be justly imputed 
to their State authorities or to them. After an experience of two years, not one 
of our citizens has been even tried for such an offence. But if such acts have 
been committed, the courts of the United States have never been obstructed in 
our State. Supported by the military power, the Federal judiciary was never 
so strong before in Maryland. The district attorney and marshal, selected by 
the President, and the latter possessing the exclusive discretion to select both 
the grand and petit juries, the whole power of both preventive and punitive 
justice was to be found in the jurisdiction of these courts. 

Sir, ro plea of a military necessity at any time, for a moment, could be proved 
in Maryland. A zealous Governor supporting the Federal power, and a supple 
Legislature, added together the powers of both State and Federal Governments. 
Was not here sufficient strength to arrest and punish the citizen according to 
law ? Has it ever been pretended that any organization existed to resist law ? 
Sir, not one honest or true man lives in Maryland, or any where, who is not 
forced to believe that the oppressions of our people have been as reckless and 
unjustifiable, as they were cruel and cowardly. 

Maryland has even been praised in reports of Secretarys, and a proclamation 
of the President, for the loyalty of her people, and the protection of the Consti- 
tution promised as a reward of her fealty. And yet, sir, we perceive how 
delusive is this new pledge. Why are the scandalous invasions, the aggressions, 
the restrictions, the insults, the oppressions upon our plainest rights, yet con- 
tinued ? Why these arrests made, why imprisonments prolonged, pr< >perty 
seized and confiscated, commerce interdicted, our slaves removed? Is it even 
pretended by those who commit them, that there now exists a military necessity, 
or any necessity, to justify these proceedings ? 

Our people have been forced to associate tyranny with the exercise of Federal 
power. They see nothing but injustice and wrong in its acts. They believe 
them to be wanton, and inflicted on grounds of a personal, political, or sectional 
influence. They know they are unnecessary, and could easily be restrained or 
prevented, and are not. 

Sir, we are not ignorant that allegiance and protection are mutual and recip- 
rocal rights ; and as a people fit to be free, ever should, we feel that the course 



35 

of oppression inflicted upon us by the Federal Government must, if persisted in, 
finally absolve us from any legal or moral allegiance to it. 

It is useless to deny that the people of Maryland have become alienated from 
the Government by the acts of Executive power. If, sir, they are to be con- 
tinued, we see nothing but calamity in the future of the Federal Government — 
nothing but oppression in maintaining polical relations with it. The hopes of 
civil liberty now beckon us away. 

A centralized Federal system absorbing* the States is now before our eyes. 
We see the movement of its giant limbs in the schemes of the measure now 
under consideration, in the plan of a national bank system, and a national 
guard, the conscription bill and other alarming measures. We, in Maryland, 
have long felt its presence in the omnipotence of Executive power. 

The source of our political system, a free ballot-box, has been crushed by the 
heel of the soldier, and our freedom of speech, our liberty of the press, our 
private property, our personal liberty, our personal security, all these funda- 
mental rights of man are overthrown. And what has been the experience of 
the past may be the fate of our future. The divine right of a refuge from 
intolerable oppression is the common heritage of all mankind. Let no one 
misunderstand me. I speak here only for constitutional right, and for its sake 
alone declare, with candor, my humble views of our future. With the Consti- 
tutions, both Federal and State, as my guides, and ever profoundly anxious to 
preserve the blessings of law and of peace within our borders, I have earnestly 
tried, against both personal and political tics and associations, to support consti- 
tuted authority for the sake of State sovereignty, believing from our position, 
that the people of Maryland could only walk safely through the fires of this 
dreadful revolution under its authority firmly and conscientiously administered. 
And while I have praised the spirit of loyalty of the Legislature that met at 
Frederick, (I mean, sir, the only loyalty that I respect, loyalty to the Constitu- 
tion,) so I have sternly condemned what at the time seemed to be, or were repre- 
sented as its tendencies, either to establish arbitrary State power on the one 
hand, or to excite a sanguinary and fruitless revolution on the other. Sir, no man 
in Maryland has, under circumstances of greater political or personal respon- 
sibility than myself, maintained the cause of the Union. No man in America 
would now make a more devoted sacrifice to restore it to its pristine harmony, 
if that were practicable. But alas, sir, it is not. 

With all the love that I have been accustomed to regard our Union, for its 
past blessings to ourselves, and for the hopes that it has inspired for the regene- 
ration of mankind, I must yet declare that our Constitution has been the only 
source of these blessings and these hopes. If it be lost, let the Union, then an 
empty sound die away and be forgotten. Take from me, sir, the Constitution, 
and I will try by revolution and the help of God, to save at least the eternal 
principles of civil liberty which His providence has bestowed. ■ 



APPENDIX. 



As Mr. May's colleagues, Messrs. Thomas and Leary, who replied to his speech, 
declined to allow him the opportunity of correcting what he declared to be their mis- 
representations — and the House of Representatives, following such example, also 
refused to allow Mr. May to be heard in reply after they had concluded, and when 
Mr. Wickliffe had yielded the floor to him for this purpose ; and such refusal was a 
violation of. the uniform practice of the House — the following proofs are offered to 
vindicate truth and to show that his constituents are opposed to, and elected Mr. May 
to oppose coercion. 

The subjoined extracts from Mr. May's letter of the 5th of June, 1861, continually 
published before his election, shows the basis on which he became a candidate and 
was elected to Congress as a?i opponent of military coercion, any statements to the 
contrary notwithstanding : 

"1 profess an unconditional reverence for and obedience to the principles and 
authority of our Federal Constitution, which, having created our Union of States, is 
alone competent to maintain it. 

" For my reply to your first question I must be allowed to repeat the following, 
quoted from my letter (public) of the 14th May, authorizing my nomination : 

"' By a compromise, amending our Constitution, I can yet see the paths of peace, 
which, with the favor of Heaven, I intend always to point out to my countrymen and 
Jor myself most faithfully to follow them.' The geographical position of Maryland 
requires her Representatives to hold the olive branch rather than the sword, and this 
is her honor as well as her interest. We ought upon this point to be a united people. 

"I have ever sternly opposed the platform of principles and hostile policy of the 
Republican party, and ever will, with an uncompromising spirit, believing it to be a 
sectional and aggressive party. 

" Do not these explicit declarations place me on the side of peace and compromise, and 
against those who prefer military coercion and a desolating war? 

" Being unable to perceive any error or obscurity in this statement of my position, 
i can see no reason to alter it." 

So much for the assertion that Mr. May's votes against war measures excited 
surprise. 

The basis upon which Messrs. Thomas and Leary rested their speeches, the security 
of suffrage, and the prevailing peace, order, and contentment of our people is so 
notoriously unfounded as not to require evidence to disprove it. If Mr. May had been 
heard, he was prepared with conclusive evidence on these points. It has, how- 
ever, been elsewhere furnished, and, as stated in his speech, the whole scheme 
of a bold conspiracy to destroy our suffrage will be exposed at a future day in proofs 
that no one can even question. The quiet of Maryland ''is the quiet of despotism." 

It is a sufficient commentary on these speeches simply to say that the day after their 
delivery a distinguished public man (Mr. VallandighamI was prevented by the open 
menaces of mob-violence from delivering a lecture in Baltimore "on the literature of 
the Bible," for the sake of charity, and the military authority governing Baltimore, 
failed to satisfy the managers of the lecture of its disposition to protect him. 

And to add another illustration, the principal independent journal of Baltimore has 
been prevented from publishing Mr. May's speech, through fear of being suppressed, 
while the replies to it of Messrs. Thomas and Leary have been published in full in the 
newspapers supporting the Administration. 

The following, copied from the Congressional Globe, (the official report of the 
transactions of Congress,) will serve to illustrate .the oppressions of Maryland and 
show the dispositions of the popular branch of Congress, and may aid the future his- 
torian of Maryland : 



38 

Extracts from Mr. May's Speech " On the Oppressions op Maryland." 

An effort having been made to expel Mr. May from the House of Representatives, 
immediately upon taking his seat in the present Congress, on the 18th July, 1861, iD 
an indignant speech, among other things, he said : 

Mr. MAY. I am more than gratified, sir, that the Judiciary Committee have, in 
this decisive way, condemned an unparalleled outrage on the privileges of a Repre- 
sentative ; and that, on an investigation, those who prompted it here, being called 
before the committee to adduce their proofs, retired from the accusation, and have 
admitted that there were no grounds for it — not a shadow of evidence to sustain it. 

What am I to say of a proceeding like this — based, as the report itself confesses it 
to have been, upon mere newspaper rumor? Upon the idle gossip of the hour, a 
Representative of the people is to be arraigned for a grave, nay, a heinous offence, and 
the attempt made to strip him of his right to a seat upon this floor. 1 have no words 
to express my indignation and disgust at this proceeding. 

* • * * * * « * * * * * 

For myself, let me say, that as it affected me personally, the issue was of the lightest 
consequence. At the time I received notice of this accusation, it was under my 
consideration whether I could with honor come here and enter upon the duties of a 
Representative upon this floor. The humiliation that I felt at the condition of my 
constituents, bound in chains; absolutely without the rights' of a free people in this 
land ; every precious right belonging to them under the Constitution, prostrated and 
trampled in the dust; military arrests in the dead hour of the night; dragging the 
most honorable and virtuous citizens from their beds, and confining them in forts ; 
searches and seizures the most rigorous and unwarrantable, without pretext of justifica- 
tion ; that precious and priceless writ of habeas corpus, for which, from the beginning 
of free government, the greatest and best of men have lived and died — all these pros- 
trated in the dust; and hopeless imprisonment inflicted without accusation, without 
inquiry or investigation, or the prospect of a trial. Sir, is there a Representative of 
the people of the United States here in this body, acknowledging the sympathy due to 
popular rights and constitutional liberty, who does not feel indignant at the perpetra- 
tion of these outrages? If so, it will be the opportunity of this House promptly to 
redress them. The country will see whether that redress will be afforded; we shall 
see whetner there is not yet a redeeming spirit in our Constitution, that amid the 
fierce conflict of arms will yet appear like an angel of peace in this Hall, dedicated to 
republican freedom, to vindicate the majesty of the violated laws. * * * 

Mr. MAY. Mr. Speaker, I have spoken of some considerations looking to my 
presence as a Representative in this Hall. I was about to say that, in view of my own 
dignity, if I had alone consulted it, my own sense of the privileges and the responsi- 
bilities of a Representative here, and of my own judgment upon the transactions of 
this body, and the circumstances of my situation as a Representative, I should have 
absolutely declined to take the oath of office here, and resigned the empty honor of 
my seat. I would have, preferred to wait and see whether the action of this body would 
have stricken off the chains from my constituents, and restored them fully to all their 
constitutional privileges. * * * * * * * * 

But I am speaking also in the spirit of a citizen who owes obligations higher than 
these — that highest of duties which binds him to maintain the Constitution of his 
country. And speaking in this spirit, and under the shelter of its authority and 
majesty, neither by my silence nor consent shall one of its precious principles ever be 
stricken down, even in the person of the humblest of my constitutents or my coun- 
trymen. 

I complain, Mr. Speaker, of these outrages and oppressions. I denounce them as 
unparalleled in the history of free government; and I call upon the Representatives of 
the people, if they have the manhood and spirit worthy of their country, to emancipate 
the down-trodden people of Baltimore from the military tyranny under which they are 
now groaning, and which has so utterly prostrated their constitutional liberties. 

Mr. STEVENS. I move, as the sense of this House, that the gentleman is not in 
order. T believe it is the sense of this House that the gentleman is not in order. 

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Maryland is entitled to the floor. 

Mr. STEVENS. I submit the motion, that it is the sense of this House, that the 
gentleman is not in order ; and I ask the Chair to put that motion to* the House. 

Mr. VALLAND1GHAM. I rise to a question of order. No such motion can be 
entertained while the gentleman is upon the floor. 



39 

The SPEAKER. The Chair cannot entertain the motion of the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania. The Chair has decided that he cannot determine for the gentleman 
from Maryland what is a personal explanation. If the gentleman is not satisfied with 
that decision he can take an appeal from the decision of the Chair. 

Mr. STEVENS. I take an appeal from the decision of the Chair. 

Mr. VALLANDIGHAM. I move to lay the appeal on the table, and call for the 
yeas and nays on the motion. 

The yeas and nays were ordered. 

The question was taken; and it was decided in the negative — yeas 53, nays 82. 

So Mr. May was ruled out of order and compelled to take his seat. 

Mr. DAWES then moved that Mr. Mat be allowed to proceed "in order." 

Mr. MAY. Sir, I must absolutely decline further to proceed, if I am to be subject 
to this sort of interruption and restriction. I will go no further now, and must trust 
to the chances of an opportunity, and of being sufficiently restored to health, when 
the field of debate may be opened wide enough to allow me to speak my sentiments 
with the freedom that becomes me, and the rights of my constituents. I shall proceed no 
further in my remarks now, but content myself with the presentation of this memorial, 
and the request that it be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and be printed. 

It is a memorial to the House of Representatives from the Police Commissioners of 
Baltimore, upon a subject most vital to the liberties of the people of the United States. 
It is couched in clear and candid language, and presents both sides of Ihe question. 
Full justice is done to the military authorities of the United States, who have inflicted 
what I consider a most unparalleled oppression. While the memorial is expressed in 
language respectful to the House, it is at the same time the language of independence, 
and comes to us in the spirit of citizens fully conscious of their constitutional rights, 
and resolved to claim them here. * * * * * 

Being questioned by Mr. Colfax, of Indiana, as to a conspiracy in Maryland, 

Mr. May replied — 

That there are thirty-thousand men — ay, and more : — who, unless the heel of oppres- 
sion is lifted from them, will, if they can get the opportunity, vindicate their consti- 
tutional rights and liberties, is absolutely true. L proclaim it, here to-day; and I ivill 
be one of the number of them, on grounds of constitutional right, and to resist 
tyranny and oppression — on grounds of American right— on grounds of consecrated 
and defined legal right. These are the grounds on which it stands. As for a conspi- 
racy against the United States, having for its object any attempt against the Govern- 
ment, or the overthrow of the military authorities, the statement is absolutely 
preposterous. It does not now exist. It never did exist. I tell the gentleman from 
Indiana it never did exist. It rests upon the relation of spies and informers — those 
detestable miscreants, who, from the beginning of the world, have been held in scorn 
and contempt by all honest men. Because of their imaginings and malicious falsehoods, 
founded upon the most malignant motives, a loyal people — a vast majority of whom 
are true to their duty to the Constitution of the country — are dominated over in this 
way. and placed under the heel of military power. I denounce the whole of it as rank, 
gross, unparalleled oppression. That is my answer to the gentlemau from Indiana. 

Now, a few words in reference to the residue of that article. I have nothing to 
reserve. What I may do, and what I have done in this business of our unhappy 
national troubles is as open as the light of day. I invite the scrutiny of my country- 
men upon every action of my life, and every thought in connection with our unhappy 
discord. Elected a Representative by the people who conferred upon me this honor by 
a large majority — elected upon the basis of peace, conciliation and compromise, as the 
only means of saving this great, prosperous and happy Government and country of 
ours, I 6tand committed to these measures ; and, sir, with my life I intend to promote 
them, come what may come. Springing from a love of peace, and for the sake of my 
countrymen, with a heart alive to those fraternal interests that ought to be dearest to 
us all, in trying to assuage those horrible calamities now impending over us, and with 
the. hope of bringing us together once more as a happy and united people, I will go 
anywhere, everywhere ; I say, sir, 1 will lay down my life for this result cheerfully. 
Elected upon such a platform, to serve such high and holy objects — appealing to the 
heart, conscience and every future accountability — I stand firm and unshaken in my 
convictions, and all the menaces, all the frowns, and 1he dominations of all the powers 
of earth cannot move me from my love of peace, and devotion, through it, to the safety 
of my country. Here is where I stand, and here 1 mean through the future to stand. 

I wish to admit that everywhere where I have gone, I have spoken the language of 
denunciation of tyranny, and I mean to do it everywhere. 



40 

Arrest of the Police Commissioners of Baltimore. 

On tbe 24th of July, 1861, Mr. Mat presented, through the Judiciary Committee, 
this resolution of inquiry : 

"Resolved, That the President be requested immediately to communicate to this 
House (if in his judgment not incompatible with the public interests,) the grounds, 
reasons, and evidence, upon which the Police Commissioners of Baltimore were 
arrested, and are now detained as prisoners at Fort McHenry." 

Note. — The words in parenthesis were introduced by the Committee, and were the 
means of passing the resolution. 

To which on the 30th of July, 1861, the President returned as follows : 

The SPEAKER laid before the House a message from the President of the United 
States, in response to the resolution of the House of the 24th instant, asking the 
grounds, reasons, and evidence, upon which the Police Commissioners of Baltimore 
were arrested, and are now detained prisoners at Fort McHenry, stating that it is 
judged to be incompatible with the public interest to furnish said information ; which 
was laid on the table, and ordered to be printed. 

Police Commissioners of Baltimore. 

On the 31st July, 1861, Mr. May offered the following resolution : 

Whereas, the Constitution of the United States declares that no warrant shall issue 
but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation ;• that no citizen shall be 
deprived of his liberty without due process of law; and that the accused shall enjoy 
the right of a speedy trial by a jury of the district where the offense was committed : 
and whereas Charles Howard, William H. Gatchell, and John W. Davis, citizens of 
Baltimore, in the State of Maryland, were, on the 1st day of July, 1861, seized without 
warrant, and without any process of law whatever, by a body of soldiers of the Army 
of the United States, by order of Major General Banks, alleged to have been made in 
pursuance of orders issued from the Headquarters of the Army at Washington, and were 
removed by force, and against their will, from their homes to Fort McHenry, where 
they have since been confined as prisoners ; and whereas the said military officer, with- 
out warrant, or authority of law, superseded and suspended the official functions of 
the said Charles Howard and others, members of the Board of Police of Baltimore; 
and whereas, since their said arrest, a grand jury attending the United States District 
Court, in Baltimore, and selected and summoned by a marshal appointed by the 
present Executive of the United States, having jurisdiction in the premises, and having 
fully investigated all cases of alleged violatian of law, has finally adjourned its session 
without finding any presentment or indictment, or other proceeding, against them, 
or either of them ; and the President of the United States, being requested by a reso- 
lution of the House of Representatives to communicate the grounds, reasons, and 
evidence for their arrest and imprisonment, has declined so to do, because he is advised 
that it is incompatible with the public interests; and whereas, since these proceedings, 
the said citizens, with others, have been, by force and against their wills, transferred 
by the authority of the Government of the United States beyond the State of Mary- 
land and the jurisdiction of that court which it is their constitutional right to < laim, 
and are to be subjected to an indefinite, a hopeless, and cruel imprisonment in some fort 
or military place, unfit for the confinement of the citizen, at a remote distance from 
their families and friends, and this without any accusation, investigation or trial 
whatever ; and whereas the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus has 
been treated with contempt, and a military officer (the predecessor of General Banks) 
has taken upon himself the responsibility of wilful disobedience to the writ, and the 
privilege of the same now continues suspended, thereby subordinating the civil to the 
military power, thus violating and overthrowing the Constitution of the Uuited States, 
and setting up in its stead a military despotism; and whereas the Congress of the 
United States regards the acts aforesaid as clear and palpable violations of the Consti- 
tution of the United States, and destructive to the liberties of a free people : Therefore : 
Resolved, That the arrest and imprisonment of Charles Howard, William H. Gatch- 
ell, and John W. Davis, and others, without warrant and process of law, is flagrantly 
unconstitutional and illegal ; and they should, without delay, be released, or their 
case remitted to the proper judicial tribunals, to be lawfully heard and determined. 



41 

Mr. HUTCHINS. I move to lay the resolution on the table. 

Mr. BINGHAM. I raise the question of order that the resolution is not admissable 
under the standing order of the House. 

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Ohio raises the question of order, that under 
the standing order by which the House is confined to the consideration of bills and 
resolutions relating to military and naval operations, and financial questions relating 
thereto, and judicial questions of a general character, the resolution is not in order. 

Mr. MAY. Does not that resolution relate to the operations of the Army of the 
United States? Is it not an allegation of the tyranny practiced under color of military 
authority? 

The SPEAKER. The Chair does not think that such declarations on the part of 
the House have anything to do with the military operations of the Government. 

Mr. MAY. Is it the decision of the Chair that the point of order is well taken? 

The SPEAKER. The Chair so decides. 

Mr. MAY. Well, I appeal from that decision. 

Mr. BINGHAM. I move to lay the appeal upon the table. 

.Mr. STEVENS. There is another ground on which that paper is not in order. It 
is not in order to make a speech at this time ; and that is nothing but a speech. 

The resolution was then ruled out. 

Proscription of Eepresentation. 

On the 24th July, 1861, Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, presented and was discussing 
a bill relating exclusively to Baltimore, Mr. May, having failed to get the floor, inter- 
rupted Mr. S. as follows : 

Mr. STEVENS. I have only to say that this bill provides for the payment of the 
police established in the city of Baltimore by the commanding general of that division, 
and there is no other fund out of which they can be paid ; the State of Maryland 
having made no provision. 

Mr. MAY. Will the member from Pennsylvania allow me to say a word or two? 

Mr. STEVENS. To ask a question. 

Mr. MAY. I will limit mv observations strictly to the consideration of the question. 

Mr. STEVENS. Oh no ; I do not yield for observations. 

Mr. MAY. I am the Representative of Baltimore. 

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Pennsylvania declines to yield. 

Mr. MAY. I hope he will allow me to be heard upon this question. 

Mr. STEVENS. I have already granted too large an indulgence for debate. 

Mr. MAY. Then I can only protest, as I do solemnly, against the bill. It is a bill 
to provide the wages of oppression. 

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Maryland is not in order. 

Fugitive Slaves from Maryland. 

Mr. MAY. I offer the following resolution, and demand the previous question 
upon it : 

Whereas, Maryland has been proclaimed by the President of the United States to 
be a loyal State, and its people are entitled to the benefits and protection of the Con- 
stitution and laws of the United States. And whereas, "persons held to service and 
labor" in the said State, "under the laws thereof," and escaping therefrom into the 
District of Columbia, have been therein arrested, and after due examination by the 
commissioners appointed by law for that purpose, have been committed to prison 
within said District in order that they may be delivered up "on the claim of the party 
to whom their service and labor may be due," according to the provisions of the 
Constitution of the United States. And whereas, before the opportunity has been 
afforded to said parties to make such claim, and immediately after the said arrest and 
detention, military officers, acting under the authority of the military governor or 
provost marshal of said District, or both, have, in many cases of such detention, 
demanded from the marshal of said District having such persons in custody, their 
release, and this without any legal warrant or process of any kind ; and upon the 
refusal of said marshal to deliver up said persons, have, with armed bodies of soldiers, 
forcibly released said persons, from custody as aforesaid, and, in effect, discharged 
them altogether from said service and labor, and any future reclamation of the same 
by the parties to whom it is due, to the destruction of their rights of property and of 
the solemnly guarantied rights of the people of Maryland, and in palpable violation of 
the Constitution and laws of the United States : Therefore, 



42 

Be it Resolved, 1. That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to investigate 
the facts and law concerning the premises, and to report the result of their investiga- 
tion at an early day, together with such measures of legislation, as may, in the judg- 
ment of the committee, be necessary to put an end to such lawless and unconstitutional 
proceedings. 

2. That a copy of this preamble and resolutions be transmitted to the President of 
the United States, and that he be requested to see that the Constitution and laws be 
faithfully executed here, in this District, so immediately under his personal observation 
and official authority. 

Mr. LOVEJOY. Will the gentleman from Maryland allow me to suggest an 
amendment? 

Mr. MAY. I object. 

The previous question was seconded, and the main question ordered. 

Mr. S. C. FESSENDEN. I move to lay the preamble and resolutions on the table. 

Mr. MAY. On that motion I demand the yeas and nays. 

The yeas and nays were ordered. 

The question was taken ; and it was decided in the affirmative — yeas 68, nays 44. 

Bill to Eelease all State Prisoners. 

On the 13th of March, 1862. Mr. May reported from the Judiciary Committee, "A 
bill to provide for the discharge of State prisoners and others, and to authorize the 
judges of the United States Courts to take bail or recognizances to secure the trial of 
the same." 

This bill was designed to restore the laws to all State and some military prisoners, 
and it provided the means of their speedy release without other conditions than giving 
bail such as the judge of their own judicial district might require. It passed the 
Bouse, and is the bill that has given rise to so much debate in the Senate, but has 
been completely changed by amendments. 

The only beneficial part of the " Indemnity Bill,'' as arranged by the Committee of 
Conference, and passed into a law — its second section, providing for the release of 
State prisoners who may not be indicted, is copied from the bill prepared by Mr. May, 
except the proviso requiring an oath of allegiance to the Government, &c. 

Fout Warren Proceeding s. 

Mr. MAY. I submit the following resolution, and move its adoption : 
Resolved, That the Secretary of State be requested to communicate to this House a 
copy of an order which, on or about the 28th of November, 1861, he caused to be read 
to State prisoners confined in Fort Warren, whereby they were forbidden to employ 
counsel in their behalf, and informed that such employment of counsel would be 
regarded by the Government and by the State Department as a reason for prolonging 
the term of their imprisonment. 

This was laid on the table, by yeas 63, nays 48. 

CUSTOM-HOUSE IN BALTIMORE. 

Mr. MAY submitted the following resolution : 

Whereas, The Custom-House authorities of the city of Baltimore have imposed 
onerous and vexatious restrictions upon the internal trade and commerce of the people 
of Maryland among themselves, amounting in a great degree to a prohibition of the 
same, and discriminations are made in applying the said restrictions, by the discretion of 
the said authorities, of an unjust and mortifying character, and, in many instances, 
founded upon personal or political prejudices ; and whereas, among others, it is 
required that citizens holding the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, as a condition 
of such trade and commerce, shall take and subscribe an oath discriminating against 
their religious faith, in the mode, and ceremony of its administration, and this at a 
time when many thousands of soldiers holding the same faith are engaged in fighting 
the battles of the Government of the United States ; and whereas, such discrimination 
is contrary to constitutional right, and is an odious reflection on the equality of 
religious privilege ; and such restrictions are a violation of law, and a usurpation of 
the reseived rights of the people of Maryland exclusively to regulate and control their 
own internal trade and commerce, as the same has been decided by the Supreme Court 
of the United States, and such restrictions can only be justified, if at all, under mili- 



43 

tary authority, and for reasons of military necessity — which do not exist — and the 
same are a manifest oppression of the people of Maryland ; therefore, 

Be it Resolved, 1. That the Secretary of the Treasury be requested to inform this 
House whether he has authorized or directed the said restrictions to be imposed ; and, 
if S0j to communicate a copy of his authority or order for the same, and all other 
information in his possession relating to the same. 

2. That the Committee on the Judiciary be directed to inquire into the facts and 
legal authority of such proceedings, with power to send for persons and papers, and to 
report at an early day the result of its investigations. 

This resolution was laid over. 

The following, copied from the Baltimore Republican of the 17th March, is a proper 
sequel to the above resolution : 

"A PORTION OF THE HISTORY OF THE TIMES." 

"It will be remembered by many of our readers, that Mr. May, our Representative in 
the last Congress, submitted a resolution during the late session, in relation to the 
vexatious and unconstitutional restrictions imposed upon the trade of Baltimore, by 
the Custom House officers of this port. It will also be remembered, that Mr. May 
was attacked and denounced for having submitted the resolution referred to, and all 
that he stated was pronounced false and unfounded, and emanating solely from Mr. 
May's hostility to the old Know-Nothing party. One of the Government organs 
declared that they had visited the Custom House, and there ascertained positively, 
that no extra oaths were imposed upon Catholics or attempted to be imposed by any 
officer of the Customs. As a fair sample of the truthfulness of tbe journal referred to, 
we subjoin the report of the proceedings in the United States Court upon the very 
case referred to by Mr. May. These proceedings show that the Surveyor, Mr. McJilton, 
did insist upon administering and oath to Mr. McAleer, not authorized by the Constitu- 
tion, and because he refused to take such illegal oath, refused to pass his goods ; hence 
the suit, the result of which we give below :" 

United States District Court. — Judge Giles. — United States vs. a lot of goods, 
wares and merchandise — Hugh McAleer, of Frederick, claimant. The grounds on 
which the goods were sought to be forfeited were, that a false statement had been 
made to obtain a permit. That the goods belonged to McAleer, and that they were 
passed through the Custom House to Mr. Obender, over the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- 
road to Frederick, under a permit to Obender. The defense was based, first, on this 
being a case to which the law& of Congress and the regulations of the treasury, did 
not apply ; second, is that if they did apply, McAleer was justified in obtaining them 
in the mode he did, because a discrimination had been made against him, growing 
out of his religion, as a Roman Catholic, which he could not yield to, without acqui- 
escing in an insult to his religion, as well as an insult to him personally in this, that 
permits were refused to him as a Roman Catholic, unless he would make the oath 
usually required of those to whom permits were granted, with the addition of taking 
the same over the sign of the cross. The following witnesses were examined in the 
case: 



" Clinton Levering testified that the oath of McAleer, taken in Frederick, December 
1st, (here exhibited the usual oath in the printed form,) was presented by him at the 
custom-house in this city, to the custom-house officer, Mr. McJilton, who told him he 
would not take McAleer' s oath unless he would swear it over a cross, and gave witness 
a form which he had in a book at the custom-house, which form was longer than the 
usual form. Mr. McJilton said he would receive no oath from McAleer unless he 
would take it over a cross. Witness's impression was that Mr. McJilton thought Mr. 
McAleer would not regard an oath as- binding unless over a cross, and that McJilton 
would require it of all Romanists. Do not think McJilton said anything about all 
Romanists ; witness rather felt that there was something personal against McAleer ; 
he so judged from what he had heard from clerks at the custom-house. Mr. McAleer 
on several occasions had presented a similar oath, and Mr.. McJilton appeared annoyed 
that so tunny applications had been made to him. Mr. McJilton appeared excited. 
Mr. McAleer is a man of high character. 

"Henry Whittington testified that he called at the custom-house with the oath, (here 
shown,) which was the one usually taken, as far as he knows. Mr. McJilton said no 

6 



44 • 

oath but one taken over a cross would do. In other words, he would not pass the 
goods in question unless the oath was taken over the sign of the cross. Witness has 
had goods passed under the oath he presented. He never heard any questions asked 
before. 

* * * ***** 

" The United States Attorney, after the above testimony, abandoned the case, and 
the jury then rendered a verdict in favor of the claimant, Mr. McAleer." 

Military Interference with Slaves. 

Mr. MAY asked leave to offer the following resolutions : 

Whereas, It is represented that certain military officers of the United States, sta- 
tioned in Charles county, in the State of Maryland, have heretofore openly declared 
their purpose to set free from slavery, and remove them from said State, negro slaves 
owned therein under the laws thereof; and whereas, on the 5th day of January inst., 
the said military officers did assemble together, by the attractions of a band of music 
and other influences, a large number of said slaves in said county, and did openly 
entice and persuade them on board of a steamer belonging to, or in the service of the 
United States, and being at a place called Chapel Point, and did remove and transport 
said slaves by means of said steamer, from and beyond said State ; and whereas, one 
Colonel Swain, commanding a regiment called "Scott's 900," acted a conspicuous 
part in the premises, and the same is a wanton and scandalous violation of the Consti- 
tution and laws of the United States and of the State of Maryland, and also of the 
duty of the said military officers, and a reckless aggression on the rights of the people 
of .Maryland ; therefore, 

Be it Resolved, 1. That the President be requested to cause the above allegations to 
be investigated, and, if found true, to bring the offenders therein to punishment, and 
cause the said slaves to be restored to their owners, according to his duty. 

2. That the Judiciary Committee be directed to inquire into the premises and report 
such legislation as may be necessary. 

3. That a copy of this preamble and resolution be transmitted to the President. 
Mr. LOVE JOY. I object. 

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Maryland having offered one resolution, 
cannot offer a second without consent, and the gentleman from Illinois objects. 
The resolution was then ruled out. 

Emancipation in Maryland. 

Mr. BINGHAM, asked leave to introduce a bill granting aid to the State of Mary- 
land for the purpose of securing the abolishment of slavery in said State. 
Mr. MAY.— I object. 

Restrictions on the Internal Trade of Maryland. 

Mr. MAY presented a memorial on this subject from James D. McCabe, H. M. Mur- 
ray, Thomas J. Hall, and others, citizens of Anne Arundel county, Maryland, and 
referred it to the Judiciary Committee, of which Mr. May is a member. That com- 
mittee referred the subject to Mr. May for investigation, who, after collecting all the 
facts, prepared an elaborate report in writing and read it to the Committee. 

The principles announced in it received the approbation of Mr. Pendleton, of Ohio, 
and Mr. Thomas, of Massachusetts, members of that Committee. But a majority of 
the Committee refused to accept it as the report of the Committee, or to allow it to be 
made to the House as a minority report, or in any way to be presented to the House. 
The subject was strangled in the Committee. 

It can hardly be necessary to add that this report fully exhibited the unconstitu- 
tional, unlawful, and oppressive character of the rules and regulations imposed upon 
the internal commerce of the people of Maryland by the Treasury Department and 
Custom-House authorities of Baltimore, and urged their immediate removal. 

Rights of Conscience. 

The following is a copy of Mr. May's resolution, referred to in his speech, and which, 
after repeated attempts made in vain, each day from the 16th of February, he at length 
succeeded in offering at the last moment of this Congress. Being read, they were 



45 

objected lo by the Republican side; Mr. Mat moved to suspend the rules in order to 
adopt them, and called the yeas and nays by the aid of the Democratic side, to make 
up the record on this vital question. As the Clerk commenced to call the yeas and 
nays, the hour of twelve on the 4th of March arrived, and the Speaker declared the 
House adjourned sine die. 

It is an interesting and significant fact, that the popular branch of the 37th Congress 
terminated its existence, in a struggle — by the small but resolute minority — to main- 
tain the rights of conscience against military tyranny. 

Whereas, It is represented that Major General Schenck, commanding the forces of 
the United States stationed in Baltimore, Maryland, has ordered as a condition to be 
annexed to the worship of Almighty God, by certain religious societies or congrega- 
tions of the Methodist Church of that city, that the flag of the United States "shall 
be conspicuously displayed " at the time and place of such worship. 

And Whereas, The said order is a plain violation of "the inalienable right to wor- 
ship God according to the dictates of every one's conscience," as it is asserted by the 
said congregations, and also by our declarations of fundamental rights, and as secured 
by our State and Federal Constitutions. 

And Whereas, A minister of the said congregations, the Rev. John *H. Dashiel, 
having, on Sunday, the 15th inst., removed the said flag from his own premises, which 
was also the place of worship of one of said congregations, where the said flag had 
been placed surreptitiously by some evil-minded person, and for so doing was arrested 
by order of the said General Schenck, and held as a prisoner. 

Be it Resolved, That the Judiciary Committee be, and hereby is instructed to inquire 
into the allegations aforesaid, and ascertain by what authority the said General 
Schenck exercises a power to regulate or interfere with the privileges of Divine wor- 
ship, and also to arrest and detain as a prisoner the said minister of the Gospel, as 
aforesaid. 

And, further, That said committee be instructed to report upon the same at an 
early day. 

A conspicuous example of the futility and wickedness of an interference by govern- 
ment with the religious sentiments of a people, is furnished in the history of Herod, 
' ' who, fresh from the slaughter of the Innocents, made it the policy of his reign to 
undermine the faith of the people in the protection of God, as a defender distinct from 
the power of the Roman Empire ; and as far as he could, he tried to overthrow and 
root out the spiritual work of Ezra. He placed a gilt eagle, the Roman ensign, at the 
entrance to the temple; and the Jews, irritated at this affront, rose in tumult and tore 
it down. This act of resistance cost three thousand of the people their lives." 



Copied from tlie Congressional Grlobe. 

SPEECHES 

OF THE 

HON. HENRY MAY. 



DKLIVERED IN THE 



HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, 
At the Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress. 



Address upon the Death of Senator Pearce. 

Speech Against the War and Arming Negroes, and for Peace and 
Recognition. 

Speech Against Indemnifying Executive Tyranny, and continuing 
it by Suspending the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. 

An Appendix containing some Proceedings of Congress, especially 
interesting to the People of Maryland. 



-» * — — <- 



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